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SOME MODERN DIFFICULTIES: 



NINE LECTURES. 



BY THE REV. 



S. BARING-GOULD, M.A., 

AUTHOR OF 'THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF,' 
'LIVES OF THE SAINTS,' ETC. 



SECOND EDITION. 



LONDON : 
W. SKEFFINGTON, 163, PICCADILLY. 

1875. 






By Transfer 

D, C. Public Library 

JUN 7 1938 



- 

>S85 






PREFACE. 



Six of the following lectures were delivered (i ad 
Clerum " in the Trophy Room of S. Paul's Cathe- 
dral, by kind permission of the Dean and Canons, 
in the week before Advent, 1874. 

They were listened to with attention and interest, 
and I was requested to publish them. 

Their object is to draw the attention of the 
Clergy to some of the difficulties which beset 
minds at the present day in the matter of Christian 
belief ; and to show that, granting nearly every- 
. thing established by natural science and Biblical 
criticism, our Faith in God the Creator, and in 
Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, need not be shaken. 

I desire also to protest with all my heart against 
the attitude assumed by so many of the Clergy 
towards science and Biblical criticism. It seems 
amazing that it should be necessary for one to utter 
a word of warning on such a subject, but the follow- 
ing extract from the ' Times ' of December 1st, 1874, 

a 2 



iv PREFACE. 

which came into my hands whilst these pages were 
passing through the press, proves that such a pro- 
test is not uncalled for. 

" The Bishop of l preached on Sunday evening at the first 

of a series of special Advent services, held in the nave of 

Cathedral. The Bishop took his text from the nth verse of the 
1 8th chapter of S. Matthew — * For the Son of man has come to 
save that which was lost.' His Lordship compared the history of the 
four Gospels with the ' Gospel of Science,' which had now so many 
prophets and apostles, and asked what the latter Gospel was. Was 
it even good news for man ? In it there was no eternity or here- 
after ; no Divine life, and, properly speaking, no humanity. ; that 
all that was within us was bestial, and we shared it with the brutes 
— no virtue, no vice, good nor evil. It made us mere automatons, 
mechanically moved according to our molecular structure — moved 
by atoms coming none knew whence and going none knew where. 
He should not stop to ask whether it were a true or false Gospel or 
true or false news. He would only ask if it were good news ? That 
Gospel of Science, if a Gospel at all, was a Gospel for the strong and 
the clever, but not for the poor, the weak, the sick, or the suffering. 
It was a Gospel which taught mankind to live as the brutes, in 
which the strong trampled down the weak and the poor ; it was a 
Gospel according to which the institutions and hospitals for the sick 
and the incurable were a scientific mistake. It taught us to fight, 
to trample, and push our way in the world, no matter what we 
fought with or what we trampled down, and if we succeeded we 
could eat, drink, and be merry, for nothing was to come hereafter • 
and if we did not succeed, why should we lead a useless life ? for we 
should be no longer in the fore-front of humanity. Society had no 
need of us, and we could take ourselves out of the way — crawl into a 
hidden place as a sick or wounded animal did into some deep 
thicket to die away from its fellows. That was the Gospel that 
in this our day was set up against the grand old story — ' The Son 
of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.' The 
Gospel for the lost was what humanity needed, not the Gospel for 
the strong — the Gospel for the weak, for the poor, for the dying, 
for the outcast, for the suffering. That was a Gospel that no 



1 I omit the designation purposely. 



PREFACE. v 

human philosopher had ever discovered, and that no natural science 
could ever reveal to mankind. Thank God for the old story in our 
Bible Gospels — that which philosophers had not yet robbed us of. 
As we stood by the sick beds and looked at the dying, as we minis- 
tered to the sick and the suffering, we thanked God we had the old 
story still to prove that the Son of man came to seek and save that 
which was lost. That was the only safe foundation on which human 
society could securely rest." 

Is it not piteous to see science thus misrepre- 
sented, science which labours night and day to 
alleviate the maladies of human nature ! It is 
necessary for the Bishops, as well as our inferior 
Clergy, to learn that the Gospel of Science is as 
Divine as any historical Gospels of Christ ; that one 
is as much a revelation as are the others, that 
rightly understood there can be no antagonism 
between them. To pit the canonical Four against 
the Gospel of Science is like the work of those 
critics who pit S. John against the Synoptics. 

Such a passage as that quoted reads like an 
extract from the i Osservatore Romano ' on Pro- 
testant civilization. The same ultramontane viru- 
lence, misrepresentation, injustice. If to the 
Ultramontane we say, "Render unto Caesar the 
things that be Caesar's," we may say to our 
divines, " Render also to God the things that are 
God's ;" for the truths disclosed to science are as 
certainly Divine as are the truths revealed to 
Apostles and Prophets, only, the truths belong to a 
different order. 

The Gospel of Science without Christianity is 



vi PREFACE. 

false because one-sided. And Christianity without 
science is also imperfect. God has many aspects ; 
the Church reveals one, science reveals another. 

For myself, I can truly say that with every fibre 
of my soul I cleave to the Catholic faith, and to 
the Gospel of Science ; that with quiet composure 
I can hold simultaneously the truths revealed to 
the Church and revealed to science, and patiently 
wait till apparent contradictions shall be solved by 
the outpouring of more abundant light. 

Philo says that the Word, which is the manna 
feeding the soul of man, is made into two cakes, 
tasting of honey and of oil, and that the one is 
the Word revealed through science, and the other 
is the Word in religion. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 
THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT I 

LECTURE II. 
ON MYSTERIES .. 22 

LECTURE III. 
THE MYSTERY OF CREATION 38 

LECTURE IV. 
THE MYSTERY OF MAN 56 

LECTURE V. 
PRIMEVAL MAN 71 

LECTURE VI. 
BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 1. THE OLD TESTA- 
MENT 93 



vin CONTENTS. 

LECTURE VII. 

BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 2. THE NEW TESTA- 
MENT .. .. 116 

LECTURE VIII. 

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL .. 145 

LECTURE IX. 
THE INCARNATION 161 



I. 

THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 

When Peter Abelard appeared before the Council 
of Sens, he found Bernard of Clairvaux occupying 
a pulpit in the midst, with a string of extracts 
culled, or pretended to be culled, from Abelard's 
writings, which he called on the assembled prelates 
to condemn. 

The reading of the passages was demanded, 
passages of deep philosophic thought in long 
succession, involving propositions and deductions 
which the bishops and abbots present had not 
received mental training to grasp and understand. 

It was a hot June day ; one after another, the 
listeners, the judges, fell asleep, or drowsed, with 
their heads on their knees or uneasily reposing 
on their palms. Others were only kept awake by 
the fear lest their nodding should be interpreted 
as consent to the incriminated doctrines. 

" Damnatis ?" cried S. Bernard after each passage. 
"Damnamus," muttered the sleepy prelates, and 
some feebly mumbled only " — namus." 

B 



2 THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 

Abelard turned on his heel and left the Council. 
He refused to argue his case before such an 
assembly. 

And what was the ground taken up by Abelard, 
against which Bernard called down the thunders 
of the Gallican hierarchy ? That to believe aright, 
it is necessary to have an intelligent conception 
of the objects of faith ; that the powers of the 
mind should be called in to show that Christianity 
is not an incoherent jumble of dogmas, but a 
rigidly co-ordinated system of truths, such as the 
reason can admit without abdicating its throne. 

After a long winter, minds were bursting from 
sleep, were expanding, and stretching towards light 
and air. The time was come for the Church to 
throw herself into the heart of this young, vigorous 
life, and if she were divine, to direct its aspirations. 
Bernard's horizon was too narrow for him to admit 
the possibility of such a course. It never over- 
leaped his abbey walls. When, at the exhortation 
of his friends, he entered the Paris schools, it was 
only to preach with fervid eloquence to the assem- 
bled scholars to fly the tree of knowledge — a serpent 
was coiled about it — to come forth out of Babylon, 
and bury the new-found talent in the heavy clay of 
monastic routine. 

If I do not mistake, we stand at a period in 
the history of intellectual development not unlike 
that of the twelfth century. There were daring 



THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 3 

speculators then ; there is no lack of audacity in 
speculations now. 

The Church, forgetting the shriekings of the 
Clairvaux prophet, accepted the task Abelard 
claimed for her, and produced Albert the Great, 
Aquinas, Bonaventura, who led the swollen stream 
of thought into sober channels. 

It may be that we are dazzled with the flash, 
and stunned with the explosion of new ideas 
falling round us on every side ; that our old land- 
marks seem to be made the butts at which modern 
speculation is hurled. 

But this is no excuse for our remaining idle, 
stark, wincing, sighing at every plunge of the iron 
hail. 

We are often vastly in error if we conclude that 
because new opinions by their explosion shake 
our towers, that therefore they are levelled against 
them. 

To shut our eyes to the questions searching 
hearts and racking souls around is selfish and 
cowardly ; yet, alas ! it is the most common refuge. 
Is our only attitude to be one of flight, our only 
harness ignorance ? Are we to be like the tailor 
in battle, who sewed a plate of iron over his back, 
and ran away ? Is the position of the pursued 
ostrich, with its head under the sand, either digni- 
fied or prudent ? 

We cannot prevent the questions which are in 

B 2 



4 THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT, 

the wind from lighting and germinating all around 
us, in the fields we are set to dress. What patient 
life-long study, what concentrated thought brought 
to bear on a vast accumulation of carefully collected 
and finely sifted data, have we got in modern 
science ! How conscientious in its treatment of the 
subjects it handles, how cautious in drawing 
deductions, how logical in application of them ! 

And what is the answer from countless pulpits, 
not in England only, but in France and Germany 
as well ? An anathema. The effervescing curate 
shrieks "Damnamus," and the easy rector mumbles 
" — namus ! " — and who heeds ? 

Not the Abelards ; they turn on their heels with 
a sneer at the fool's paradise we have created for 
ourselves, and refuse to dart their logic into our 
heavy ears. Not the active, expanding minds of 
the readers of our day — they see nakedly which 
way reason runs. Authority is a wherry blundering 
across its path, to be run down and swamped, if it 
will not clear out of the course. 

It is a mistake, it is worse than a mistake, it is 
an injustice, to condemn opinions which we have 
never seriously set ourselves to understand. If the 
conclusions arrived at be sound, let us accept 
them ; if they seem to us to controvert established 
beliefs, either those beliefs are human glosses on 
divine revelation, or the scientific conclusions rest 
on insufficient data. 



THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 5 

It is a mistake, it is worse than a mistake, it is 
a sin, to assume that a new scientific or critical 
discovery ruins the foundations of our belief, be- 
fore we have thoroughly mastered it and have 
had time to estimate its bearings on religious 
doctrines. 

Rome trembled at the Copernican system, and 
doomed Galileo to recantation. Yet revelation has 
survived the discovery 7 that the world goes round 
the sun. "E pur si muove." Let us be cautious 
lest we, like the Inquisition which condemned the 
great astronomer, make ourselves the laughing- 
stocks of the future. 

At one time the fossil shells in our chalk hills, 
the saurian bones in our lias beds, were shown as 
manifest confirmations of the Mosaic narrative of 
the universal deluge. 

Scandalized beyond measure were our grand- 
mothers when geologists parted lias from chalk by 
a chasm of ages, and protested that even the 
modern chalk was earlier than the Flood by a 
thousand centuries. To ruin a cherished evidence 
of Bible revelation was profanity. To abandon 
this proof was to wreck Christianity. Yet it is all 
accepted now. " E pur si muove." 

And now we have strange disclosures of the law 
of evolution discovered to rule the world ; of the 
antiquity of man, and his gradual emancipation 
from the stage of ape. 



6 THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 

How far these are established on conclusive 
evidence, how far they are hasty deductions from 
data inaccurately observed, I cannot now say. 

What is true will survive, what is erroneous will 
fall. The survival of one sort of truth cannot im- 
peril the life of other truths ; though it may sift out 
truths from conjectures. A robust, long-lived con- 
jecture is often accepted as a truth. 

Truth, from whichever quarter it comes, should 
not scare us. " Reason," says Justin Martyr, 
" commands those who are good, and lovers of 
wisdom, to cultivate and love Truth alone, casting 
aside the opinions of their ancestors if they be 
wrong." l 

A few years ago I was invited to attend a 
meeting of a clerical debating society. The subject 
of discussion was " Clerical Reading." Fifteen 
clerics attended. The chairman opened the topic, 
and each present was expected to speak on it. 
The first, in a florid speech, declared that one book 
alone was needed, before whose effulgence every 
human composition faded — the Bible ; let that be 
the one, the only study of the Christian minister. 
A second rose and advised the addition to the 
library of one book more — the hearts of his 
parishioners. A third recommended the daily 
paper; a fourth the ' Cornhill Magazine;' a fifth 
Scott's - Commentary ; ' a sixth Simeon's * Skeletons.' 
1 < Apol.' I. § 7. 



THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT, 7 

None got so far even as ' The Contemporary 
Review. 5 x 

As I walked sadly home after this discussion, 
I passed some little boys sitting on a bridge, 
fishing for gudgeons with crooked pins. They had 
sat thus all the afternoon, but had caught nothing. 
Crooked pins catch no fish. 

We are grievously in error if we think that the 
attitude of men's minds at the present day is one 
of hostility to Christianity. 

There never was a time, probably, when men 
craved more sincerely for truth, panted more 
fervently for the water-brooks of God. 

At the time when the first great expansion of the 
Church took place, men felt a need for religious 
truth ; the poor and ignorant because paganism 
wiped no tears from their eyes ; the wise and 
learned because they needed something stronger 
as a stay than the speculations of philosophers. 

Christianity satisfied two great needs. The 
down-trodden and suffering wanted hope and 
sympathy ; the learned wanted a revelation in 
place of guesses. 

Christianity held up the cross and crown to the 
sufferer, and he accepted it without inquiring into 
the credentials of the Church. 

Aristobulus, the Jewish Peripatetic, and Philo 

1 This incident, related by me to a friend, has already found its 
way into print from his pen. 



8 THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT 

paved the way before Christ to the Greek philo- 
sophical mind. Dionysius and the Alexandrian 
school after him supplied the thinkers of the first 
three centuries with a Christian philosophy nobler, 
more coherent, surer founded, than those of Pytha- 
goras and Plato. 

Christian philosophy went down under the 
waves of barbarian invasion ; as the waters re- 
ceded some precious relics only were cast up in 
fragments. 

The loss of some of the most valuable books 
of the Areopagite, Catholic philosophy will never 
cease to deplore. 

What Dionysius did for the first age, Aquinas 
did for the middle age. Then, as before, the want 
was felt of a rational system of Christian doctrine. 
If men were required to hold the Faith with their 
hearts, they would hold it with their understand- 
ings also. If it were divine it would answer the 
appeal of the opening intellect, and feed it, as it 
had fed the heart. The work of Aquinas pre- 
vented the rupture of intellect from faith. It was 
full up to the level of knowledge at his day. 

Knowledge has been increasing since Aquinas 
wrote his ' Summa/ but the level of Christian 
philosophy has not risen with it. Science is in 
advance of theology ; and theology has been 
steadily losing ground. We look in vain for any 
token of rebuilding the ruins of Dionysius, and 



THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 9 

enlarging and modernizing the deserted halls of 
Aquinas. Theology must master the questions 
of the day, or be crushed to death under them. 
We stand much in the same position as did the 
preachers of Christianity when philosophers in 
the third century, and schoolmen in the twelfth, 
asked a reason for the hope held up by the 
Gospel. 

It may be, it is, shocking to some minds, that 
what they have regarded since infancy as God's 
truth should be summoned before the bar of rea- 
son, and asked to give an account of itself. But 
it is inevitable, so long as the world is full of 
religions, each clamouring for the adhesion of man- 
kind, and each producing claims to be divine, 
Men in the present day do not object to believe, 
they feel a need of religious truths, just as did 
the philosophers and schoolmen of old, but their 
reason must be satisfied that the statements they 
are invited to believe are truths. They decline 
to hook themselves on crooked pins. 

Now what is the only answer we have given 
to this very just demand ? 

It is this : — The Bible is God's Word, His re- 
velation of Truth to the world. 

But a second question arises, How are we to 
know that the Bible is God's Word, His revelation 
of Truth to the world ? 

The answer given is the only one that can be 



IO THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT 

given, By the internal evidence of its truth. Now 
Biblical critics have set themselves to the task 
of examining this internal evidence, the task which 
we preachers of Christianity have set them. If 
there be that internal evidence, well and good, 
they will accept our first premises, and become, 
what we wish them to become, Bible Christians. 
But if, on the other hand, the first touch of 
criticism causes our proposition to snap and fly, 
and discloses flaws in what we protested was 
sound metal, who is to blame ? Not the critics, 
they are only doing what we set them to do. We 
must beware of not resenting the result arrived 
at ; our duty plainly is to re-examine our faulty 
propositions. 

And science, accepting our dogma of the Bible 
as the basis of all Christianity, the perfect revela- 
tion of Truth, having arrived at certain conclusions 
on the origin of species, the antiquity of man, the 
non-universality of the Deluge, and the like, says : 
Here are facts which we can prove by overwhelm- 
ing inductive evidence. They do not accord with 
the statements in that Book you say is a complete 
and infallible exponent of Truth ; therefore your 
assertion is false. What evidence is there to the 
truths of Christianity ? 

Is science wrong in taking up this line ? We 
have forced her to assume it ; we should be the 
last to blame her. 



THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. II 

What is the force which urges on our scientific 
men, our Biblical critics ? Is it not a passionate 
love of truth ? a craving to find out the truth ? 
And what is a more healthy sign of divine life 
than this ? 

Through all the shams and veneers of modern 
conventionalities, arms are stretched forth to clasp 
the true, the firm. Voices cry, when we present 
them with bold assertions, Are these true, or are 
they shams only ? Like dying Gothe, souls sick 
of the yellow glimmer of artificial illumination 
plead for " more light," not of the same quality, 
but white and clear, the pure beam of day. It is 
the cry of health, an appeal from man to God ; 
and God will not reject it. In what age have there 
been such revelations as in the present ? And why 
so ? Because the craving for truth in man is like 
the rod of Moses ; it taps the fountains of eternal 
truth, and makes them gush out of the flinty stone. 
God's revelation answers to man's cry, to man's 
capacity for receiving it. 

The healthy reason gasps for truth as the lungs 
pant for air. Its function is discrimination. But 
reason is dead and in dust among those who gulp 
down with equal zest a Catholic verity and a 
mediaeval figment ; to whom the marvels of Beth- 
lehem and of La Salette are alike and equally 
credible. 

The same principle which w T ould forbid the 



12 THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 

exercise of the reason in matters of Christian faith, 
would also fatally forbid the Moslem or the Parsee 
to desert his creed ; would consecrate to all eternity 
the African fetish and the Hindoo idol. 

To a certain class, Christianity will be always 
acceptable ; they will not ask to see her credentials, 
believing that she bears them on her truthful brow. 
But this is the same class as that which received 
her when she first appeared on earth. These will 
receive her for the same reason, because she satis- 
fies a need in their souls. 

Never, never, as long as the earth is full of 
violence, and men suffer and women weep, will the 
Cross disappear from the sky. 

The dying gladiator, that noble relic of classic 
art, is a picture to us of the wronged and suffering 
of the heathen world. The side pierced, the life- 
blood draining away, the head bowed hopeless to 
the earth. Oh the sorrows of the ancient world, 
unlighted by a single ray ! The tears only dried 
by death ! the broken hearts bleeding, bleeding, 
like an open vein, without a healing hand to 
staunch and bind them up ! Only the earth to 
look to in dull despair, on which to fall, into which 
to be trampled ! 

And look from that statue to the stone forms on 
the cathedral front, types also. Martyrs, Magda- 
lens, with raised eyes, pressing a book against their 
hearts, and finding therein rest for their souls. 



THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 1 3 

There are fibres in human nature which sound 
responsive to the vibrations of the strings in the 
Gospel, as I have heard the chords of a harp 
tremble and sound when another instrument has 
been played. 

But it is not the same with persons in easy cir- 
cumstances, who have had nothing particular to 
distress them. A good breakfast, a thriving busi- 
ness, a capital dinner, and a comfortable home — 
what do they want more ? There is no room for 
a want. 

Such persons have been brought up to adopt no 
course of action which does not commend itself to 
their reason ; to invest no capital in any venture 
which is not secured by guarantees. They are 
brought up from childhood to accept nothing on 
trust, to examine everything for themselves, to 
prove all things before they lean their weight on 
them. 

How is this acquired frame of mind to be abdi- 
cated when it looks to religion ? 

Such persons are convinced only through their 
reason. Other persons are open to conviction 
through their hearts. The door to their souls is 
through their reason ; the door to others' souls 
is through the affections. 

Then by all means let Christianity in by the only 
entrance that is available, and do not hammer at a 
door that has been nailed up against the east wind. 



14 THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 

I fear we have been sadly neglectful towards this 
class. No doubt the conviction of the heart is more 
beautiful than that of the head, yet, perhaps, intel- 
lectual faith is as precious in God's sight as that 
which is emotional. The latter is impulsive and 
unreasoning; the former, if cold, is more sub- 
stantial. 

The constant appeal to the feelings is unwhole- 
some to the audience, and injurious to the preacher. 
It tends to make the religion of the former senti- 
mentality, and to effeminate the mental fibre of the 
latter. 

There was a time when the clerk ruled the minds 
of men. It is not to be regretted that the preroga- 
tive of learning is no longer confined to a caste ; 
it is matter of thankfulness that the key of know- 
ledge is in every hand. 

But there is one cause for regret, that the clerk 
in Holy Orders has allowed himself to be out- 
stripped in learning by the lay clerk ; and it is 
cause for humiliation that he does not gird up his 
loins and strive to overtake him. 

The temper of mind of a past age may have 
been one of indiscriminate acceptance as truth of 
every doctrine enunciated, but that was because the 
instinct of truth was then hybernating. 

The present age, on the other hand, is actuated 
by an enthusiasm for truth, and its presence the 
clergy should be the last to ignore or misinterpret. 



THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 15 

It may be more pleasant to the teacher to have 
his doctrines received without dispute, but it is 
certainly most mischievous. 

It is satisfactory to the doctor that his patients 
should swallow his prescriptions with implicit belief, 
and reverence his cochineal and water as the elixir 
of life ; but such a temper, if general, would en- 
courage quackery. Unhesitating belief in the 
province of religion would lead to superstition. 

An unreasoning faith is a tincture, an intelligent 
one is an essence. 

God asks of no man a blind faith, and what 
God does not ask, we should not attempt to exact, 

All the forces of the human spirit ; every investi- 
gation in every realm, physical, spiritual, humane ; 
every artistic creation, even every refinement in the 
pursuit of pleasure, are the aspiration of the soul 
towards truth. 

The truths men see are, indeed, partial ; but they 
are the irradiations of the sovereign, all-embracing 
Truth. 

Truth is a light which invades the soul, and 
brings to it the sense of certainty ; evidence of a 
fact or of a law. 

It does not depend upon the will, which seeks 
often in vain to elude it ; it masters, penetrates, 
absorbs the will ; it is a new sensation, like the 
magnetizing of the needle. The iron bar that lay 
listless wherever it was flung, when once animated 



1 6 THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 

by this new tendency, rests nowhere but pointing 
to its poles. 

If we take the mathematical verities, the clearest 
there are, is it not certain that so soon as the mind 
has resolved a problem, it rests in the solution with 
the relief of an exhausted swimmer who touches 
land ? 

Moral truth is not as tangible ; but it does not 
carry with it less light. It is produced less from a 
syllogism than from an intuition of the soul The 
jury which pronounces on the guilt of a culprit 
does not seek the same sort of demonstration as is 
contained in a geometrical theorem. The research 
is through an analysis of acts and motives, difficult 
and precarious, and reason would never thread its 
way, were it not preceded by conscience with a 
torch. 

Truth in the analytical sciences lies at the 
bottom of the analysis, and the certainty of finding 
it there constitutes the attraction of the pursuit. 
Without the conviction that a certain result would 
crown the effort, there would be no research. 

This conscience of truth, this passion for truth, 
establishes a filiation of the human soul from God, 
who is the plenitude of truth. The instinct of 
truth is the appeal of man to God through reason, 
just as love is the appeal of man to God through 
the heart. 

So far as we are permitted to comprehend God's 



THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT. 1/ 

design with respect to man, it would appear that 
each instinct is given to man to lead him to perfec- 
tion. The man, therefore, who cultivates only the 
emotional side of his being, is incomplete ; and 
the same may be said of the man who sacrifices the 
heart to the head. One instinct rectifies another, 
so that there is always a tendency to a general 
result. An one-sided development is a moral 
monstrosity. A partial and progressive conquest of 
truth is the supreme exercise of intelligence ; it is 
the duty laid on individuals, and on all humanity ; 
the goal to which they must tend through heart 
and through head, the windows through w T hich the 
soul sees heaven, the conduits through which truth 
flows in. 

Perhaps future felicity, which religion promises, 
may consist in the spirit penetrating farther and 
farther by knowledge and love into the essence of 
the infinite Being. But in the meantime, the efforts 
of science from the beginning of the world are the 
striving of the mind to raise a little now, to-morrow 
more, the corner of the veil that covers the prin- 
ciples of facts, the laws by virtue of which they are 
engendered. 

But God is the cause of all law, the source of all 
principles. What, then, is human science but the 
search after God ? 

That it is sometimes hasty in its conclusions is 
not to be wondered at. This arises from the im- 

C 



1 8 THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT 

petuosity of the soul in its pursuit, which obscures 
its judgment, and leads it to make premature 
generalizations, and to forget the verity that 
truths are complex and mutually control one 
another. 

I have insisted, somewhat warmly, on the fact that 
modern science and Biblical criticism are not irreli- 
gious, anti-Christian ; that, on the contrary, they are 
eminently religious and Christian, inasmuch as the 
mainspring of their activity is the passion for truth. 

This is not, indeed, the light in which they are 
regarded by pious souls reposing in traditional 
belief. The daring speculations of science, of criti- 
cism, of philosophy, afflict them with a panic. The 
water of their pool is troubled ; they cannot think 
that an angel has descended into it, to give it 
healing virtue. 

The progress of science is viewed with appre- 
hension, as though threatening the precious realm 
of faith ; every discovery is a Khivan expedition 
bringing science nearer to their confines, and con- 
veying a threat of invasion. Better intervening 
wastes of barbarism than such close proximity with 
civilization everywhere. 

No doubt that scientific and critical and philo- 
sophic speculation is often daring ; but what would 
science, criticism, philosophy be without specula- 
tion ? To deprive them of it is to pronounce their 



THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT 19 

death warrant. Speculation is to science what the 
tendril is to the vine. Before it ascends, it thrusts 
out a feeler, and that feeler is a conjecture. If it 
lays hold of facts, it pulls up all its wealth of leaf 
and fruit a stage higher. Speculation is to science 
what the eye is to the snail. The daring guess is 
projected forward to survey the ground before it 
creeps onward. 

No doubt that scientific men and Biblical critics 
have shocked somewhat roughly preconceived ideas, 
and we may wish to address them as Virgil ad- 
dressed Dante : 

" Look how thou walkest. Take 
Good heed thy soles do tread not on the heads 
Of thy poor brethren.'' 

But if they have been rash and rough, have not 
the clergy been unduly suspicious of them, unjust 
towards the motive that actuates them ? 

There is temper lost on both sides through 
mutual misunderstanding. The clergy and pious 
laymen are not wilfully obscurantists, hugging doc- 
trines in which they do not believe, nor are scientific 
men actuated by an iconoclastic spirit. 

If it frighten the former to see questions agitated 
which they thought were for ever set at rest, it 
irritates the latter to hear on all sides the shrill 
piping of those who lie stiff and stark in the icy 

C 2 



20 THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT 

fetters of an unbending orthodoxy, like the spirits 
Dante saw in Cai'na : 

" Moving their teeth in shrill note like the stork," l 

and always in condemnation. 

When I see the activity of minds, the general 
agitation of spirits, which characterizes this age, I 
cannot doubt but that a divine breath of life has 
passed over the earth, a magnetic wave which has 
attracted and set trembling the needles within. 

This is no evil influence at work. Evil produces 
torpor, death ; good produces life, activity. We are 
at a transition period in the life of Christianity, who 
can doubt it ? The last word on Christianity has 
not been uttered. Every divine verity contains in 
itself manifold truths, and the epiphany of each 
manifestation is preceded by a movement in the 
spiritual world. The days of the Lord never come, 
unless there is first an awakening of the dead. The 
excitation of minds in the third century preluded 
the advent of theology. Through the preceding 
age Christianity had been a religion of facts. Then, 
without abandoning one fact, it unfolded a theology. 
The convulsions of the sixteenth century were the 
precursors of a new manifestation, under which we 
now live ; Christianity became a system of philan- 
thropy. 

Again, after a long rest, the forces which stir 

1 Dante, * Inferno,' xxxii. 



THE ASPECT OF MODERN THOUGHT, 21 

spirits are moving. Never, perhaps, since the dawn 
of the Day Star, has there been such a shuddering, 
a rending of tombs, and rising from the dead. 

Does this presage the death of Christianity ? God 
forbid that we should entertain such a thought ! 
It precedes the advent of a new expansion, a new 
revelation of the truth contained in Christianity. 

Each manifestation has answered some need felt 
by the age which saw its birth. And the sense of 
that need is evoked by the touch of God. 



II. 

ON MYSTERIES. 

At the entrance of an Egyptian temple stood on 
either side a range of sphinxes, symbols to all who 
entered that they were approaching mystery. 

It is over the sphinxes in Christianity that men 
stumble nowadays. Why, they ask, should there 
be mystery in religion ? Why should we be called 
upon to give credence to that which we cannot 
understand ? A religion to be divine, to be suitable 
for man, must be devoid of mystery. 

The objection is plausible enough, but its plausi- 
bility is all that it has to recommend it. 

In the temple of every human science, if the 
sphinx does not watch at its gate, it crouches 
within, in its last recess, behind a veil. Penetrate 
as far as you will, through the propylseum, the nave, 
thrust aside the veil on which the eyes of genera- 
tions have rested, and which they have been con- 
tented to regard as inscrutable, press on into the 
sanctuary, and the mysterious sphinx is there. 

In every science we have to admit the presence 



ON M YS TERIES. 2 3 

of the inexplicable, the insoluble. We give a defi- 
nition of it, and are satisfied that by naming it we 
have learned all about it. The definition of one 
age becomes the question of the next. 

The mythic father of the House of Cleves was 
by name unknown ; unknown he dwelt with his 
bride at Nymwegen, for a year and a day. A fatal 
curiosity urged her to ask his origin. Then a swan 
leading a shallop by a silver chain came swimming 
down the Rhine ; the sad bridegroom entered the 
boat, and the swan swam away with him into the 
region of mystery, and was never seen again. 

Science embraces mysteries and accepts them as 
facts, she governs, becomes a mother by them ; but 
her fatal curiosity prompts her to ask too closely 
their nature, their origin, and they disappear from 
her sight. The final answer of to-day is the starting 
point of inquiry to-morrow. We are ever in pursuit, 
but never attain the perfect solution of every 
enigma. One mystery involves another, like Chinese 
puzzle-boxes. We open one, it contains a second, 
the second a third, the third a fourth, and so on 
till we come to the last ; but in Nature there is no 
last box to be broken open, the succession is 
infinite. 

It is unjust to expect of religion, what is ad- 
mitted as necessary in science, to argue that mys- 
tery is unsuitable to the service of man in the 
realm of religion, when we live and act upon the 



24 ON MYSTERIES. 

assumption of unsolved mysteries in our daily 
transactions. 

Who doubts the identity of his personality with 
the little child of thirty years ago, and the youth 
of twenty ? And yet that identity is a mystery. 

Of what am I constituted ? I am a congeries 
of matter, that is my body ; my soul is the 
resultant of all the forces packed up in the atoms 
of which my flesh, and blood, and bone, and nerve 
are composed. 

But what is that which collects material, dis- 
tributes it, builds up neurine cells here, weaves 
fibrine there, forges rubies in the caverns of lung 
and heart, and rolls them in the rivers of artery 
and vein ? What is that which assimilates some 
matter and rejects other? In the midst of the 
incessant flux of matter and change of forces, 
where, what am I ? 

I have not an atom in my body which con- 
stituted part of me when I was a little child ; not 
a force that acted on my centre then acts on it 
now. Why then am I the same ? What creates 
my identity ? How explain my memory ? 

How comes it that lighting suddenly on an old 
copy of i Red Ridinghood ' I had pored over when 
I first learned how to read, and have not seen 
since, causes such a trembling in the finest, inner- 
most fibres of my heart ? That crimson cloak 
and gamboge basket are perfectly familiar to me — 



ON MYSTERIES. 2$ 

even the blue patch of paint, extending from the 
little gown to the wolfs snout, though I have not 
seen them for thirty-five years, The brain par- 
ticles, which received that impression more than 
thirty years ago, have gone through strange 
travels ; they have been wafted off and utilized 
by herb and flower; the bee gathered them out 
of the heart of a rose, and built them into walls 
of wax, and the wax has burnt in a lustre at a 
duchess' ball, and the carbonic particles have 
drifted away, to be breathed in by the lungs of 
the fresh grass, and the grass has been consumed 
by the sheep, which served your meal to-day ; 
but the old 'Red Ridinghood 5 is nothing to you, 
who have woven these particles into your brain ; 
and I — I cannot look at it without turning my 
face to the wall. How is this ? What constitutes 
that identity in me which ' Little Red Ridinghood 
has revealed ? The sphinx is there. 

I take up on my finger this tiny grain of sand. 
Little grain, What are you ? Answer me. 

There is weight, there is shape, there is colour, 
there is consistency. I can seat you in a scale, 
or weigh you in water, and tell your actual or 
your specific gravity. I can hold you down under 
a magnifying glass and measure your facets and 
angles. I can ascertain your powers of polarizing 
light. I can register your hardness. A hundred 
years ago you were only a bit of sand. Look up, 



26 ON MYSTERIES. 

granule ; you are silex to-day. We know all about 
you. Your name is silex. Silex, to be sure, yes, 
silex, that is flint. Are we satisfied ? May we 
dismiss you to your place ? 

No, little atom, we must know more. What is 
silex ? Why do your crystals always form so 
many faces ? Why are you not soluble in nitric 
acid ? Why not disposed to oxidize ? I know as 
a fact that you are not ; but I want the reason of 
these facts. 

Ha ! no answer. The sphinx is there, in the 
little grain. I doubt the navigation of human 
reason, which wrecks on a petty particle of sand 
that I blow from off my nail. 

There is a mystery, a miracle, hanging daily 
above our heads. Hitherto it has baffled science. 
It is a daily enigma, a daily apparent defiance 
of an universal law. A sphinx set in the sky — 
the sun. 

The law of the equilibrium of forces and the 
indestructibility of matter is perfectly established. 
Yet the sun defies that law, or rather, let me say, 
we are, as yet, incapable of applying this funda- 
mental, primary law to it 

The photosphere of the sun is composed of incan- 
descent metallic clouds. We can analyse those 
fiery vapours, and tabulate the metals of which they 
are composed. 

Combustion is chemical action. The metals in 



ON MYSTERIES. 2J 

the photosphere are being combined with some 
gas, probably hydrogen. The light and heat 
emitted are the forces given out, as these metals 
are converted into salts, hydrides, which will be 
precipitated upon the solid surface of the sun, in 
an unflagging rain of ash. 

From the beginning of time there has therefore 
been an incessant liberation of force in the modes 
of light and heat, radiated into infinite space. 
Here and there these waves break upon a planet. 
We walk and rejoice in their glory and warmth, 
consume some and roll back others, which ripple 
away through boundless regions in ever-widening 
circles. There is, therefore, a daily, hourly, inces- 
sant exhaustion of the forces in the sun. 

But if so, then the attraction of the sun must 
be sensibly diminishing, our orbit be steadily 
widening, our year lengthening, our seasons ex- 
panding. 

Such, however, is not the case. 

According to the law w r hich science recognizes as 
infallible, the sun must receive a return of force in 
exact equivalent to the amount expended. 

And as the force is radiated into space, from 
space the equivalent must return, or the balance be 
destroyed. 

And whence comes the metallic supply that feeds 
the voracious orb, and whence the hydrogen to 
make them flame ? .. If these had been erupted from 



28 ON MYSTERIES. 

the body of the sun, it would have burnt itself out 
long ago. Metal once converted into cinder cannot 
be used up again. It has given off something in 
marrying hydrogen — light and heat, so much latent 
force, which is now raying away, away, eternally in 
the vast abysses of space. 

But if there be a steady accession of material 
from without, in meteoric showers, for instance, 
then the bulk of the sun must be steadily increasing 
under the unfailing cinder rain. And if the mass 
of the sun be increasing by the acquisition of addi- 
tional matter, then so is its total weight, its power 
of attraction. We are being drawn nearer to the 
sun, our orbit is contracting, our years, our seasons, 
are shortening. 

No doubt some day this mystery will be ex- 
plained. But till it is, science has no right to 
discredit religion because it is not bare of mys- 
teries. 

Mysteries, then, surround us, are above us, under 
our feet, are in us, are everywhere. We must 
expect, therefore, to find them in religion ; and the 
existence of mysteries in the Christian faith is no 
argument against its truth. 

Yet to hear the objections raised against Chris- 
tianity, one would suppose that a mystery was an 
offence to the understanding ; that it is unendur- 
able for a rational spirit to be required to admit 
certain statements which it cannot sound, which it 



ON MYSTERIES. 29 

cannot demonstrate with the precision of a problem 
in one of the exact sciences. 

1. Mysteries are relative. 

A mystery is a truth which we do not under- 
stand. 

What is mysterious to me may be perfectly 
explicable by you. 

The rising of water in a bent pipe to its own 
level, to the height whence it entered the tube, is a 
mystery to the labourer laying down a pipe between 
a spring and a cistern. To me it is no mystery. 
I know that what to him is a phenomenon is obedi- 
ence to a law. The water rises at one end of the 
pipe to the level at which it enters it at the other 
end, because the column of air at one orifice must 
balance the column of air at the other orifice. 

This is conclusive to the plumber. But I am 
uneasy about my law. I ask, Why has the air got 
weight ? And I am told that the air has got no 
weight ; that weight is only another name for the 
attractive force exercised on a substance by the 
earth. 

But why has the earth this attractive power ? 
Because it has force of cohesion. The attraction 
of gravitation is the resultant of the forces of cohe- 
sion in the atoms which constitute the earth. And 
why have these atoms cohesion ? What is an 
atom ? Produce one. 



30 ON MYSTERIES. 

My friends, we are stumbling in the dark over a 
multitude of sphinxes. 

But to return to my point. Mysteries, I said, 
are relative. They are relative to the degree of 
knowledge in each man. What is mysterious to 
me is not mysterious to another. 

The mechanism of the steam engine is a mystery 
to me. The spectroscope is a mystery to you. A 
track of light lies before every man, illumined by 
his own knowledge, but all around, on every side, 
rise phantoms and darkness. 

Standing in a fir plantation, and looking straight 
forwards, one sees an avenue reaching away to 
light and sky ; but on right and left is a labyrinth. 
Yet another man a yard or two off, has the same 
vision of an aisle of tree trunks and o'erarching 
branches, and where you stand is confusion only. 

There is a great difference among men in the 
power of discerning truths, and the discernment of 
a truth is the rolling back of mystery. 

There is a difference in aptitude for receiving 
truths. There is a hierarchy of genius. Some 
minds are more enlightened, with greater capacities 
than others. The more extended the knowledge, 
the less of mystery. All the intelligences of crea- 
tion stand on different stages of a scale which 
stretches from earth to heaven, and each has his 
sweep of horizon more or less extended according 
to the elevation at which he stands, — the highest 



ON MYS TERIES. 3 l 

intelligence commands the widest circle ; but it is a 
circle nevertheless ; it has its circumference, and 
beyond that horizon broods mystery. As he 
widens his circle, he widens his ring of limitations, 
of the unknown, of mystery. 

What is a mystery at one time of life is not a 
mystery at another. 

This follows from the fact of man being con- 
stantly undergoing education. Things seen par- 
tially and imperfectly in early life are seen perfectly 
in later years. The mist rises as the day advances. 

2. The existence of mysteries is a necessity. 

If mystery be that which lies over the frontier of 
the known, then mystery must exist wherever 
knowledge is partial ; and partial knowledge must 
be, in finite minds. 

To God there can be no mystery, because He 
sees all things perfectly in all their relations. 

But this is not possible with finite minds. The 
intellect may embrace all the laws which govern 
nature, but it cannot pursue every application of 
them to each individual worm or lichen. 

Are we justified in concluding that we know all 
the laws and forces of nature perfectly ? In 1783 
Montgolfier sent up the first fire-balloon. To 
ninety-nine persons out of a hundred the balloon 
was a miracle ; it ascended in defiance of the laws 
of gravitation. When it was ascertained that hot 



32 ON MYSTERIES. 

air was lighter than cold air, the ascent of the 
balloon ceased to be regarded as miraculous ; it 
ranged itself under application of known laws. 

When it was proclaimed that the chemical con- 
stituents of the sun and of the fixed stars could be 
tested, it was thought impossible. Who could 
mount to sun and star and analyse their flames ? 
When the spectroscope was exhibited, the state- 
ment which seemed an insult to reason was 
acknowledged as true. 

Modern scepticism objects to miracles, says that 
those claimed as having been wrought by Christ 
were impossible. God could not violate His own 
laws. No, He could not ; but there may be laws 
and forces at His command which as yet we know 
imperfectly, or not at all, by which these marvels 
may have been wrought. 

We are not justified, then, in asserting that 
miracles are impossible ; the only legitimate ground 
of argument against them is defect of evidence 
establishing that they took place. 

Man, then, must see things partially ; and this 
partiality in his vision is the cause of mystery 
lying on his horizon. 

God could not, even if He would, make mysteries 
disappear from our eyes. For were He to do so, 
He would make our reason unlimited ; and infinite 
intelligence resides with God alone. To give man 
absolute knowledge would be to cause an explosion 



ON MYS TERIES. 3 3 

in his brain. Infinite knowledge cannot be crushed 
into limited capacities. "Not by caprice nor by 
choice," says Dante, " has God kept all things 
veiled, but by necessity." 

3. Mystery is necessary for us. 

For our happiness. 

It is mystery which gives zest to every science 
and to art. 

For if a science were limited, it would lose its 
interest. It is the immeasurable depth, the never- 
exhausted variety, which exists in every depart- 
ment of the study of nature which draws on the 
mind, captivates the attention, quickens observa- 
tion, creates and feeds research as an absorbing 
passion. 

The primeval men, says Indian tradition, lived 
in a subterranean abode. They perceived long 
fibres hanging to them from above, roots that 
stretched feeling down for moisture. They laid 
hold of these trailing fibres, and crept up and up ; 
as they ascended they became aware of light and 
space and air, and so at length they reached the 
surface of the world. 

Every science is some such thread let down out 
of infinite light and truth and space, and up them 
men are climbing, light brightening, truth growing, 
space widening around them as they mount. 

And art is only attractive because of mystery in 

D 



34 ON MYSTERIES. 

it, because it too lays hold of a fibre of infinity. If 
it were bound round with impracticable barriers, if 
it could but mix its colours and vary its designs, 
like the changing pieces in a kaleidoscope, it would 
lie down and die of despair. 

The permutations of a kaleidoscope are so many, 
the combination of ideas in an artist's brain are so 
many. There is nothing new under the sun. A 
hot, hard band contracts the brow. The soul is 
stunned and stupefied. 

Greek ecclesiastical iconography is all rule ; and 
Greek art is no more. A sacrifice of Abraham 
must have a green tree on the right and a brown 
tree on the left ; the angel must have one hand up 
and the other down in a prescribed upper corner. 
The ram must be caught in a thicket by both 
horns, and must be in profile. Abraham must be 
in such a posture, and in such coloured garments of 
such and such a cut ; and Isaac in such and such. 

It is said that in every picture you must show a 
peep of sky, or a way out of it into the sun. There 
is no opening in Greek iconography for the artist's 
soul to break out, ruffle its wings, dip them in 
heaven's dew, and soar skywards. 

" In that which is secret," says Humboldt, " there 
is an inexplicable charm, a breath of infinity." 

S. Theresa, if I remember rightly, had a vision of 
hell. Not flames and the undying worm were its 
torment, but its drear monotony ; its dark wall 



ON MYS TERIES. 3 5 

opened glimpses of no future, were hung with no 
ideal pictures. Everything was finite, and there- 
fore the soul perished with suffocation. The soul 
had lost all sight of God, of the infinite, and this 
was death eternal. 

And what is more distressing to the human soul 
than to be windowless ? Weariness of spirit, ennui, 
is the languishing of the soul in the presence of 
things it knows all about. Give it a new pursuit, 
open it a passage into some fresh path, and life, 
zest, happiness revive. 

Take the first and simplest illustration that 
occurs — a Swiss inn in rainy weather. Hour after 
hour, day after day, of a curtain of falling parallel 
lines without, of three poor lithographs on the wall, 
and two Tauchnitz volumes on the table. The 
monotony becomes maddening. Everything in 
the room is perfectly well known, every attitude 
in the lithographs, every situation in the old novels. 
The mind is dying of boundary. It cannot break 
through book or picture. 

Mystery is therefore a necessary consequence of 
the sense of the infinite ; its presence is the earnest 
given to the soul that it may expand and aspire. 
The progress of knowledge does not lead to the 
destruction of mystery, but to the revelation of 
more and more of it. Every newly-acquired light 
throws back the problem without dissipating it ; 
and if it seems to illumine one mystery, it is only 

D 2 



36 ON MYSTERIES. 

that it may disclose a grander, more solemn one 
behind it ; and this is necessarily the case, for mys- 
tery is only another name for the stage of the 
infinite at which our reason halts. The reason 
may grow eternally, and eternally advance, but it 
never can attain infinity. 

4. If, then, mystery necessarily spring into 
existence through the contact of the finite with the 
infinite ; if the existence of mystery be a necessary 
consequence of the finality of man's knowledge, 
then its presence in Christianity is no argument 
against the truths of Christianity. If religion did 
not contain mysteries, if it did not touch the 
infinite, it could not be divine, it would not be true. 
It would be no religion, but a cul-de-sac. 

Every science, nay, every action of our lives, 
reposes on the assumption of hypotheses. 

We assume the objective reality of the pheno- 
menal world, the unity of the thinking I, myself; 
our freedom, causation, and a thousand other 
things, which are not demonstrable. 

To systematize chemistry, the existence of the 
atom which no man had ever seen or weighed was 
assumed and given weight ; and on this gratuitous 
assumption the science of chemistry was reared. 

The point and the line are defined, and geometry 
starts to life, but point and line are not ; there 
are no such things, never were, yet without the 
assumption of them geometry would be impossible. 



ON MYSTERIES. 37 

What is the unit ? absolute, indivisible ? We 
have no unit in the world. Everything is com- 
pound, multipliable, divisible, and subdivisible. 
Nowhere in the world are we shown the unit en- 
gendered of nothing, indivisible by itself, which 
multiplied and divided by itself is always and only 
one, immutably itself. 

The existence of the unit is hypothetical, and it 
lies at the base of numbers and of mathematics. 

What hypotheses are to science, that revelations 
are to religion, foundations on which to build. The 
whole of Christian morals and religious worship 
stands to the facts of revelation in the same position 
as the problems of Euclid stand to the definitions 
and axioms. The fundamentals of religion must 
be either hypotheses or revelations ; but whether 
one or the other they must be mysteries, for they 
relate to the unknown, the unknowable. 

As Dante in ' Paradise' sings : 

" The deep things which here I scan 
Distinctly, are below to mortal eye 
So hidden, they have in belief alone 
Their being ; on which credence, hope sublime 
Is built/ 5 



III. 

THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 

Apart from the world which God has called into 
being, God is unknowable, because inconceivable. 

I AM THAT I AM is the only name by which 
He can be designated apart from creation. Oblite- 
rate from your thoughts the existence of the 
phenomenal world, and try to conceive a notion of 
God,— it is impossible. When we say that God is 
good, is wise, is infinite, is all-powerful, we use ex- 
pressions to which we have only a right because of 
the existence of the world ; and these expressions 
are purely relative, they describe the position in 
which God stands to creation. He is good because 
the creatures of this world are happy ; He is wise, 
because the laws of this world are admirable ; He 
is infinite, because space predicates infinity ; He is 
all-powerful, because force acting through matter 
emanates from Him. Destroy matter, and what is 
force ? Remove boundaries, and what is infinity ? 
Destroy the world, and laws cease to rule, wisdom 
disappears from our horizon, and with it the con- 
ception of goodness. 



THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 39 

The existence of the world is therefore the revela- 
tion of God's nature in relation to phenomena, not 
in itself, for of that we do, we can know nothing. 

This truth is well brought out in the Book ' Zohar,' 
one of the earliest monuments of the Kabala : 

" Before God manifested Himself," in creation, 
"when all beings were yet concealed in Him, 
among the unknown He was the most unknown. 
Then the idea of God can be given no name, it can 
only be indicated by an interrogation. He first 
formed the imperceptible point, and that point was 
His thought" — of creation — "and that thought 
assumed a mysterious and holy form, and He 
clothed it with a rich and shining vestment ; then 
the universe was, and God was thenceforth name- 
able." 1 

" Before God had created form in the world, 
before He had produced any image, He was alone, 
resembling nothing, inconceivable. For who could 
conceive Him as He is, before creation ? what was 
the form by which He could be seen ?" 2 

Now, there is a question which man has often 
asked, and which will always interest him. What 
is the origin of the world ? 

As long as man is engrossed only in getting out 

1 * Zohar,' fol. I and 2 ; fol. 105. ' Zohar' is a collection of Caba- 
listic maxims and philosophy, not by one hand, or of one date, but 
varying from the first to the seventh century. See Frank, " Le 
Kabale," in the ' Memoires de l'Academie,' Paris, 1839. 

2 * Zohar, 5 fol. 42. 



40 THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 

of the soil what will sustain life, he asks no ques- 
tions, any more than does the ox or the ass, content 
with its turnip or thistle. 

The mind of the Central African negro, of the 
Australian or Papuan savage, has never done aught 
but grovel. From time immemorial it has run on 
all fours, seeing only pumpkins and maniocs, and 
seeing them only with an eye to eating them. 

There are minds that never hatch, that lie per- 
manently coiled up in their shells, which are to 
them at once a cradle and a coffin, satisfied with 
the air-bubble and yelk that nourish embryonic 
life, without a wish to burst into activity, to the 
surprises, the contests, ay ! and the conquests of 
real life. 

But the moment man begins to think, he begins 
to ask questions about the world he sees. And 
these are the leading questions that he asks : 

1. How came the world into being ? 

2. Why does the world exist ? 

The rudest people who think have asked, How 
is it that the world we see, the sun, the moon, the 
solid earth, the plants, the beasts and birds, have 
come into existence ? Why is the sun constant in 
his course, the moon in her phases, the seasons 
in their sequence, the birds and beasts in their 
habits ? 

But it is only after men have cultivated thought, 
and have learned to look for purposes underlying 



THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 4* 

all action, that they have further asked, Why does 
the phenomenal world exist ? 

Till we have found some answer to the first 
question, it is idle to speculate on the second. Let 
us, then, take this first problem, and seek its 
solution. 

How is it that the world came into being ? Now, 
before answering this question, let us see what 
sources of information we have to go to, on which 
to base a satisfactory answer. 

First: We have Nature herself to question, but 
Nature may babble to us of her childhood, she can 
tell us nothing of her nativity ; she can, however, 
reveal to us the laws which govern her, and thence 
we may deduce a strong presumption as to the 
processes she has traversed in attaining maturity. 

Secondly: We have the answers of different 
religions, which provide us with accounts of the 
origin of the world. It is very clear that such 
accounts cannot be founded on the evidence of 
men. They must be either guesses or revelations. 

These revelations or guesses may be subdivided 
into two classes. They yield us, after sifting, one 
of two answers. They give us a creation or a 
cosmogony ; they represent the world as creatura, 
ktlctls, or else as natura, fyvcris. The world was 
made, or the world was born. 

Each answer presents a difficulty. Each possibly 
contains a truth. 



42 THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 

Out of each a distinct religious system has 
emerged, Theism and Pantheism. According to 
the Theistic view of the universe, the world was 
created by God. By an act of will He called into 
being all things that exist. He spake, and they 
were made, He commanded, and they were created. 
On these created existences God impressed immu- 
table laws. Creation is a marvellous mechanism 
made and set in motion by the Almighty, who also 
maintains it in working order. He stands outside, 
apart from his work, as an artificer who makes and 
regulates a watch. There is no evolution, no varia- 
tion, no spontaneity. All moves in predestined 
order ; all beings are struck in their inevitable 
shapes in inflexible dyes. Prolong this theory into 
religion, apply it to man, and its infallible, logical 
result is Augustinian, Calvinistic, Mohammedan 
predestinarianism falling like a frost upon him. 

And it is a theory open to grave objection. If 
God is thus placed outside of, apart from the uni- 
verse, if God be one, and the universe be another, 
then God is not infinite, not everywhere present. 

And it is a theory which contravenes the daily 
accumulating results of observation, of science. 
From the lowly fungus, which, under varying cir- 
cumstances assumes varying forms of organization, 
up to the tree that grows obliquely if it cannot 
otherwise reach the light, from the highest human 
faculty which increases or dwindles according to the 



THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 43 

demands made on it, down to the polype that 
changes its skin into stomach and its stomach into 
skin when turned inside out, we see everywhere at 
work a living intelligent force, adapting its mani- 
festations, modulating its expression, according to 
accident and circumstance. 

Examine the recently laid egg of some common 
animal, such as a salamander or a newt. It is a 
minute spheroid, in which the best microscope will 
reveal nothing but a structureless sac, enclosing a 
glairy fluid, holding granules in suspension. Let a 
moderate supply of warmth reach this semi-fluid 
globule, in its watery cradle, and the plastic matter 
undergoes changes so rapid, and yet so steady and 
purposelike in their succession, that one can only 
compare them to those operated by a skilled 
modeller upon a formless lump of clay. As with 
an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and sub- 
divided into smaller and smaller proportions, until 
it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too 
large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent 
organism. And, then, it is as if a delicate finger 
traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal 
column, and moulded the contour of the body ; 
pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the 
other, and fashioning flank and limb into due sala- 
mandrine proportions, in so artistic a fashion, that, 
after watching the process hour by hour, one is 
almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that 



44 THE MYSTERY OF CREATION, 

some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic 
lens would show the hidden artist, with his plan 
before him, striving with skilful manipulation to 
perfect his work. 

Where, what is the power that performs this 
miracle under our very eyes ? 

Is it without, or is it within ? Does an external 
artificer make that reptile according to immutable 
design ? or is there a spontaneous, intelligent force 
in that glairy sac, energizing its constituents into 
form, marshalling the cells, co-ordinating the diverse 
functions distributed among them ? 

Regard chaos as that egg in which floats purpose- 
less matter. The heathen writers of Greece begin 
with the dark and formless chaos, in whose womb 
all beings slumbered in dreaming, fermenting germs, 
out of which they developed themselves by degrees 
in a dim, instinctive manner. With them there is 
birth, but not creation. 

The kingdoms of Nature fight their way out of 
the depth of the life of Nature, emancipating 
themselves, differentiating themselves, accentuating 
themselves, by the impulse of some dark forces, 
incomprehensible, inexplicable, — a world-soul, as 
Plato called it. 

Modern science leans towards a similar theory. 
Starting from matter as a homogeneous mass, sub- 
ject to the operation of force in some quite simple 
form, there must ensue a process of evolution ; the 



THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 45 

mass will be penetrated with force which will act 
from centres dividing the like from the unlike, and 
grouping them apart. 

Thus there will grow up a progressively more 
and more complex structure of the universe, each 
portion undergoing its own peculiar changes. Slowly 
from this embryo universe, the universe of to-day 
is developed. 

The various existences sprang up, indeed, subject 
to law, but it was the law of necessity. They were 
forced to assume their peculiar features, or must 
have disappeared. Thus law is imposed by the 
existences in the world. All the forces in the 
universe act, so to speak, on each solitary germ, 
and project it into such and such a condition of 
life, which it must fill or die. The universe is an 
oligarchy. 

Is there no truth in this theory ? I should be 
sorry to say so. But that this theory covers the 
whole of the question I cannot admit. It leaves 
untouched the very heart of the question. It may 
describe a process, but it does not establish its 
origin. 

Underlying that question of the origin of the 
world is another, a very important one, which must 
engage our attention before we approach the ques- 
tion that rises out of it. 

That question is, What is the world ? 

If we can answer this question aright, unless I 



46 THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 

mistake, we shall find that what is true in Theism 
and what is true in Pantheism are capable of 
conciliation. 

What, then, is the world ? 

I adopt the definition of the Areopagite ; — it is 
a theophany. It is the manifestation of the 
thoughts of God. 

What an act or word is to man that the world is 
to God. Man's thoughts find expression by muscu- 
lar action, more or less complex, of the hand, or 
the foot, or the tongue. By such means he trans- 
lates an idea into a fact. So the exteriorization of 
an idea in the mind of God is a creative act. 

The glorious vision of the universe rose up 
before the mind of God — I speak as a man — and 
He converted that wondrous possibility into an 
actuality. What in eternity was ideal, became in 
time phenomenal. 

The universe is, so to speak, the incarnation 
of the Divine ideal. 

But what is idea ? It is the archetype, the 
paradigm of things that are to be. 

The ideas of God formulate themselves in a 
created vehicle, and become their force. 

Science declares the indestructibility of matter 
and of force. Why are they indestructible ? 
Matter, we are told, may change its combinations, 
force its direction, but neither can cease to exist. 
Why so ? Because the thoughts of God are inde- 



THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 47 

structible. That is the guaranty for their per- 
manence. 

The creative ideas entering the phenomenal world 
become subject to the conditions of time. 

In eternity time is not ; time is not an entity, 
it is a condition of matter. Cause and effect, 
origin and end, are all one till matter is created. 
Then the result detaches itself from the cause, 
processes unfurl, the chain of effects unwinds. 

The Divine ideas, having become phenomenal, 
pass under the categories of time, traverse all 
the stages from cause to effect. Consequently the 
idea of a plant or of an animal must needs travel 
through the periods of development from the first 
sporule to the last term. 

Consequently, also, the world was at once 
created and born. It had a beginning when it 
passed by creation from the realm of idea into 
the region of actuality, and from the moment that 
the Divine idea clothed itself with matter it passed 
through all the stages of natural evolution. 

We express our thoughts in words — I recur 
to the illustration — which we articulate with the 
tongue, or transcribe with the pen. The tongue 
and throat are set in motion to produce certain 
vibrations of the air, the hand to trace certain 
characters on paper. The instantaneous idea is 
spread out into a succession of sounds and letters. 
The doctrine which I am enunciating is not only 



4§ THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 

that of Dionysius, the great Christian philosopher 
of Alexandria, it is also that of the Kabala : — 
" Come and see," says the Book ' Zohar/ (< thought 
is the origin, the principle, of all that is. But the 
idea is at first undeveloped, it lies enfolded within 
itself. When the idea begins to expand, it arrives 
at the degree of spirit ; then it takes the name of 
intelligence, and is no more as before hidden, the 
idea has exteriorated itself. Spirit in turn de- 
velops itself, in the midst of the mysteries which 
envelop it. Thence emerges the voice, which is 
the reunion of all the celestial choirs. The voice 
separates into distinct words and articulate sounds." 

Thus the procession issues from the idea to 
creation, which is the complete manifestation of 
all that is contained in the one idea. " The idea," 
says the Book ' Zohar/ " is the principle of all that 
is, whence all that is derives being." 1 

It is not a little remarkable to find the dis- 
coveries of modern philosophy, of which Germany 
is justly proud, anticipated and applied to solve 
the mystery of creation by the early ancient 
Christian philosopher and the Jewish Kabalist. 

Nature shows us every species of organism with 
which we are acquainted begin in a sporadic form. 
Accordingly we may conclude that the world 
started from innumerable beginnings, each of the 

1 * Zohar,' pt. I., fol. 246. The same notions occur also in Philo's 
treatises * O he Creation/ and ' On the Sacred Laws,' B. 1. 



THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 49 

infinitely many germs growing, expanding, ripen- 
ing, attaining their destined perfection. 

And what is each of these germs but the living 
Divine idea, slowly, surely, making its epiphany ? 
Now if this hypothesis be true, we obtain a theory 
of creation not opposed to the doctrines laid down 
by modern science. 

We are told that the primitive germs of all 
plants and animals are indistinguishable proto- 
plasms, vitalized cells, and that these have been 
ruled by circumstances to assume here a position 
in the vegetable realm, there one in the kingdom 
of animals. 

The Divine ideas of the man, the beast, the bird, 
the flower, the lichen, start from one source, the 
most rudimentary living cell conceivable. But they 
advance, gather material, differentiate functions, co- 
ordinate their action, from the simple progress to 
the complex, till each idea accomplishes itself in 
the perfect lichen, flower, bird, beast, or man. 

In their course they run parallel for a while, but 
one halts here, another there ; one branches off in 
this direction, another in that. 

The various creatures are milestones on the road 
run by man ; letters, syllables, words in the long sen- 
tence that ends and finds its signification in man. 

Has every idea run its course out ? is the variety 
of combinations exhausted ? I cannot think so. 

Look at a few ideas carried out to perfection 

E 



SO THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 

here, and see how many are the directions in which 
perfection is to be found. 

Take, for instance, the hand in man, that organ 
so delicate, almost intelligent. In the bat it becomes 
a leathery wing, in the tiger a clawed foot, in the 
ruminants a column and hoof, in the walrus an oar, 
in the fish a fin, in the bird a wing. 

Take the idea of lungs. If we look to the object 
designed to be attained by that organ, it seems to 
us as if it reached its most admirable and effective 
development in man ; in whom it is folded within 
his breast. 

But not so. Look at the bee, the butterfly. What 
are the wings ? They are, to some extent, the lungs 
of the insect, not furled up within the body, but 
drawn out at the sides, spread, transparent or scaled 
with gorgeous colours. 

What infinite variety there is in the bee, the moth, 
the butterfly ! How marvellous is the splendour or 
the quiet loveliness of their painted or transpa- 
rent lungs ! Look at the variety of shape and of 
colour, — of colour from the purple emperor flitting 
about the oak tops, to the ghost moth wandering in 
the summer night among the apple trees ; — of shape, 
from the streamers of the Brazilian swallow-tail to 
the twenty-four dainty plumes of the polydactyla. 

Surely this idea cannot be further varied. 

But look under water, and see the wondrous struc- 
ture of air-bladders and gills in the fish, the delicate 



THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 5 1 

fringes that adorn some of the shell-fish, the fea- 
thery blossom of the serpula, the soft brushes that 
protrude from the sides of the larva of the day-fly, 
the frost-flowers adorning the sea-slug. 

These also are lungs, — lungs marvellously varied 
and marvellously perfect 

Surely in them the idea must be exhausted, so 
lavish is their variety. But not so. Look at the 
plant. What are the leaves, what the petals of the 
flowers ? These are the lungs of the plant. Think 
of the inconceivable variety of leaves, of petals, 
variety in shape, in disposition, in colour, and you 
will get some faint notion of the unlimited changes 
that can be produced in the idea of lungs of this class. 

And is not each in its way perfect ? The indented 
leaf of the oak, the feathery fern, the sword of the 
rush, the disc of the penny-wort, the orange petal 
of the tiger-lily, the blushing cheek of the rose ? the 
blood-tipped rays of the daisy, the heaven's blue 
lobes of the gentian. 

Take, but very briefly, another instance : — the 
soft down on the human skin. In the hair of 
the head, in the nails on the fingers : the same 
idea takes distinct inflexions. But the same idea 
bursts forth also in the glorious plumage of the 
bird, makes the little humming-bird flash like an 
animated gem ; the same idea clothes the fish, the 
lizard, the armadillo, with scales, strong and glisten- 
ing with prismatic colours. 

£ 2 



52 THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 

I have taken but a sample of instances to exem- 
plify the manifoldness of one idea. And if one idea 
contains in itself so many possibilities, we obtain a 
view of nature not opposed to the law of evolution 
observed by natural philosophers. They take an 
animated cell, and they show how that by altering 
its circumstances they can alter its direction ; they 
can develop it as a plant or as an animal. 

Well ! — the creative, living idea contains in itself 
many possibilities, and ripens into that form, ex- 
pands in that direction which is adapted to the con- 
ditions in which it is placed. As the sun's ray 
falling on the rain-drop on the spray in the morning 
flashes as a ruby, as an emerald, as a topaz, or as a 
sapphire, according to the angle at which it is re- 
fracted, so is it with creative purpose entering into 
relations with matter. 

From this we learn what is the law which governs 
evolution ; — it is the law that the individual is con- 
ditioned by the whole. As the integers in a fixed 
sum may vary from the unit upwards, but as one 
rises in value, the others correspondingly decrease, 
as 5 + 5, 4 + 6, 3 + 7, 2 + 8, 1+9 make up ten, 
so can the integers which make up the creative 
ideal vary indefinitely, but can never disturb the 
balance, never break the unity. 

The sum of life in the coppice may be equal to 
the sum of life in the park ; but in the former each 
of the countless saplings that spindles upwards 



THE MYSTERY OE CREATION. 53 

represents but a petty fraction of the unit ; whereas 
in the park the number of trees is diminished, and 
the amount of life in each is so much the more 
increased. 

A square foot of soil will grow, say ten weeds 
and one meagre mangold. Pull up the weeds, and 
the mangold becomes comparatively bigger. The 
sum of life in the square foot is not disturbed. 

The sum of life in savage Europe and that in 
civilized Europe may be equal, but in the former it 
was made up of tangled forest, dense morass, the 
urochs, the elk, the bear, the wolf, and here and 
there a group of shivering savages. The integer 
representing human life was low, that which stood 
for vegetable and bestial life was proportionately 
high. 

But as Europe becomes civilized, the low integer 
increases, the population becomes denser, and the 
integers representing animal and vegetable life 
descend the scale. The forests yield to fields, the 
morass to meadow ; the urochs and the wolf dis- 
appear. 

And thus we arrive at a reason for the law which 
we observe ; the reason for that law is the unity of 
the Divine idea of creation, an unity which it is 
impossible to disturb. 

When the eye rests on a landscape, the vision 
forms an image on the brain. But though one, 
that image contains in itself subsidiary images, — of 



54 THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 

the trees, the grass, the rocks, the sky. But each 
of these subsidiary images is itself composite ; it is 
made up of the representations of the leaves, the 
trunks, the grass-blades, the stones, the tracts of 
blue, and the patches of cloud. 

Now in some analogous manner we may, with 
reverence, imagine the vision of creation to have 
stood ideally before God. The idea is one, but 
divisible, and subdivisible into an infinitude of 
subsidiary ideas, processions^ to use the Dionysian 
term, all co-ordinated in one. All these ideas 
enclosed in the one vast idea of creation, inasmuch 
as they emerge from, and fall back into one idea, 
must be in perfect accord and unity. 

The human mind receives ideas, and the ideas 
are transmitted from the objects to the brain. The 
illustration therefore is faulty. For in the Divine 
mind the ideas originate, and proceed from it, as 
rays from a centre, which differentiate themselves, 
from the simple break into the composite through a 
series of processions, each manifestation being an 
hypostasis of the thought of God. 

" Every number," says the Areopagite, " pre- 
exists uniformly in the monad, and the monad 
contains uniformly in itself every number, and 
every number unifies itself in the monad, and the 
more it departs from the monad the more it divides 
and multiplies itself. 

" So also, all the rays of the circle co-exist in the 



THE MYSTERY OF CREATION. 55 

centre in their one point of union, and this is a 
point which comprehends in itself these lines uni- 
formly united among themselves, which also per- 
fectly coincide in the centre/' to which they converge, 
and which also generates them, " and as they leave 
the centre, and separate, the more separable they 
become, the more also they diverge from one ano- 
ther." Thus in Nature the reasons of all in- 
dividual and particular existences are in God, all 
partake of the unity of their origin, all issue forth 
from the one creative source, drawing from it their 
nature, their force, their direction. 

" Among themselves all things 
Have order ; and from thence the form, which makes 
The universe resemble God. In this 
The higher creatures see the printed steps 
Of that eternal worth, which is the end 
Whither the line is drawn. All natures lean, 
In this their order, diversely ; some more, 
Some less approaching to their primal source." l 



1 Dante, ' Paradise,' I. 



IV. 

THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 

In my former lecture I gave an answer to the 
question, "How the world came into being?" 

I showed that the world is the manifestation of 
the creative ideas in God. 

On this occasion I wish to show why the world 
was called into being. 

If the world was made, there must be a reason 
for its creation. We cannot suppose that God 
called the universe into existence without a pur- 
pose, for to operate without purpose, is to operate 
without intelligence. If the world came into being 
without guiding intelligence, purpose unfolding itself, 
we have blind chance working in pre-existing matter, 
— a notion I set aside as one I am not prepared to 
discuss on this occasion. 

What, then, is the purpose of God in creation ? 
At the outset we must put aside certain reasons as 
inadmissible. We cannot say that God was con- 
strained to create by any want in His nature. 

We have needs, and the satisfaction of these 



THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 57 

needs is the motive of our action. But the existence 
of these needs is the proof of our imperfection. If 
our nature were complete in itself, it would have no 
desires. Having no desires, it would not act. Con- 
sequently, to us, imperfection is the stimulus and 
guaranty of activity. 

But God's nature is complete in itself; there is 
no defect, therefore no need. Consequently the 
motive of creation must not be sought in any 
necessity constraining God. 

We speak our thoughts, we build, paint, compose 
music, write, because by so doing alone can we 
realize our ideas, and thereby give ourselves satis- 
faction. Our ideas demand exteriorization, and 
this exteriorization is necessary to us because we 
are composite beings. If we had no ideas to con- 
vert into action, we should be material beings only ; 
if we had ideas with no desire to express them in 
act or word, we should be spiritual beings, only. 
But the fact of the imperious necessity in our nature 
requiring the manifestation of our thoughts, proves 
to us the duality of our nature. 

Through the mind of deaf Beethoven rolled rich 
undulations of harmony, and fluent melodies, which 
he transcribed. But have we not heard of the tears 
wetting the old musician's cheeks and dropping on 
his manuscript, because he could not translate into 
sounds, hearing which he might rejoice, those ideas 
that welled up in his mind ? 



58 THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 

An idea with us is only realized when trans- 
formed into an act. But with God it is not so. 
A noumenal idea to Him is as real as that which 
is phenomenal, because His nature is simple, 
whereas ours is complex ; His is spiritual, whereas 
ours is spiritual and material. 

Consequently, we must put entirely away from 
us the notion that the world of ideas is not as real 
as the world of phenomena ; and that to God, who 
is a Spirit, the idea of creation was not every whit 
as real as the visible universe of to-day. 

If, then, the reason for creation were to be found 
in the nature of God, there would be no creation. 
We must therefore look elsewhere for the motive 
that led God to transform the world of possibilities 
into the world of actualities. 
What, then, is the purpose ? 

Let us examine our own natures, and see if they 
do not afford us a clue. 

Now, why do we give form to our ideas ? I have 
already given you one reason, but that reason is not 
the only one. We translate our ideas into acts 
either to give satisfaction to ourselves, or because 
I we desire to convey our ideas by that means to the 
minds of others. 

Here, then, we have two reasons ; the first of 
which we cannot admit as explaining creation. 
But the other, I believe, unlocks the mystery. 
God created the world in order that through 



THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 59 

the visible things of the universe He might 
communicate His ideas to certain existences who 
should be capable of receiving them. 

How do we know a man ? By his thoughts. 
How do we know his thoughts ? By his acts and 
words. So God may be known by His thoughts ; 
and the thoughts of God are manifested by 
creation. 

The world, then, is the visible exhibition of 
the ideas of God, Nature the sensible signs of 
His thoughts. It is a mighty book, written within 
and without with Divine conceptions. But w r ho 
is to read this book ? Who is to spell out this 
created speech, and comprehend its significance ? 
Not the being simply material, the mineral, the 
vegetable, the animal ; they are the alphabet of 
the great scroll, not the readers thereof. They 
live only in the material world ; their notions 
move and circulate only in a created medium. 

The readers, the interpreters must live in an- 
other world as well — in the world of ideas. Ideas 
exist and move in spiritual spheres. Those who 
are to catch and understand the ideas of God 
must have a spiritual nature capable of perceiving 
transcendental truths. 

Now if God desired to manifest His thoughts 
to purely spiritual beings, He would not have 
created. For pure spirits receive ideas imme- 
diately, without material media acting as vehicles 



60 THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 

for their transmission. Idea answers to idea in 
the spiritual world, as the flash in the west is a 
reflexion of the lightning-flash in the east. 

Therefore, he who is to read creation must be 
neither mere spirit nor mere body, but must have 
a spiritual nature combined with a corporeal nature, 
so that through the things revealed to the mind 
by the bodily senses the thoughts of God may be 
perceived. 

And who is this, but man ? 

" God/' said Timseus of Locri, " composed man 
by uniting the indivisible essence (spirit) and the 
divisible essence (matter), so that of the twain he 
made one, in whom are united the two actions 
which serve as principle of the two movements, one 
always the same (towards unity, infinity), the other 
always diverse (towards plurality, finality)." 

If, then, God is the author of creation, creation 
is only rational with man as its final term. And 
man as its final term is only the key to and expla- 
nation of creation, if he have in him the faculty 
of reading and interpreting creation. 

But that faculty is the mind or soul. 

Now of mind or soul there are two sorts. 

There is that which belongs to the animal, and 
there is that which is the prerogative of man. If 
man were a mere animal, he would require a mind 
sufficiently illumined to enable him to combat 
those hostile influences which combine for his 
extinction. That is to say, he would require 



THE MYSTERY OF MAN, 6l 

sufficient intelligence to form weapons wherewith 
to defend himself against wild beasts, and to pro- 
vide himself with their flesh for food and their 
skins for clothing. His intellect would be higher 
in type than that of the dog and horse, inasmuch 
as he would possess the faculty of framing weapons, 
but in the structure of a dwelling hardly surpass 
the bird that builds so dainty a nest 

The measure of man's intelligence would be his 
necessities, and his necessities would be deter- 
mined solely by the obligation laid on him by 
his nature of preserving his race from extinction. 

But this animal intelligence is not the only one 
that has been observed in man. It is the only one, 
indeed, that is to be seen in certain races of man- 
kind ; but the fact of high civilization demonstrates 
the existence in man of not only an instinct of self- 
preservation and preservation of the species, but also 
of an entirely distinct phenomenon, — the capacity 
for and desire to reach a development independent 
of and even injurious to physical perfection. The 
oyster sickens to produce the pearl, and the artist 
and the student have not the rude health and 
muscular development of the savage. Art and 
science in no way conduce to the perfection of man 
as an animal. Art will not make man eat and 
drink and sleep better, and science by prolonging 
weakly lives tends to the physical deterioration of 
the race, for it allows those to live and become 
parents of still sicklier children, who in a savage 



62 THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 

state would die off in early youth. Science inter- 
feres with the operation of the law of natural selec- 
tion, and we have to thank it for the prevalence of 
consumption, neuralgia, and lunacy amongst us. 

We have then as a demonstrable fact, in our 
natures an element whose development is inde- 
pendent of our animal instinct. Man has a double 
capacity, and a double intelligence ; a capacity for 
animal development, with a corresponding animal 
instinct ; and a capacity for intellectual develop- 
ment, with a corresponding spiritual intelligence. 

The former is the anima animalis, the latter the 
anima spiritualis. 

Man with only the animal instinct would be no 
explanation of creation, he would be but another 
step in the ladder leading to nothing; — a stride 
ahead of the gibbon and the gorilla, as the anthro- 
poid ape is a stride ahead of the tailed monkey ; — 
but that is all. 

To explain creation man must have a spiritual 
intelligence. And a spiritual intelligence we know 
that man has got. 

But you may ask what I mean by saying that 
he has the faculty of explaining creation. 

I mean this : — that the intellectual faculty, mind, 
or soul, in man is capable of seeing beyond what is 
phenomenal ; of detecting unity in the midst of 
diversity ; of perceiving the abstract athwart the 
concrete ; of piercing the limit to gaze on the in- 



THE MYSTERY OF MAN, 63 

finite ; of seeking the simple in the midst of the 
multiple. 

What is unity but the form of the creative idea 
embracing all possibilities, every variety in perfect 
harmony ? And the simple, the abstract, the in- 
finite, the absolute, are Divine thoughts, reflecting 
the very nature of God Himself. 

Without these ideas, science and art could not 
exist, mental progress would be impossible. 
Whether man acknowledges it or not, God is in 
all his thoughts, for he introduces the ideas of God 
into all his scientific problems, into all his artistic 
conceptions. 

Man beholding creation may place himself on 
one side and see in it only Nature, as when one 
observes a sunbeam penetrate a dark room, and 
watches the motes that glance in the ray ; or he 
may look up the long chain of existences, and 
behold God through them, as one standing in the 
sunbeam glances up it, and his eye catches, and is 
dazzled by the sun. 

I have said that whether man acknowledges it or 
not, he has God in all his thoughts, for he has the 
ideas of infinity, of unity, of order, of truth, of 
beauty. 

These are ideas which are manifested in creation, 
but which do not manifest themselves except to 
spiritual natures. 

The world is made up of what is limited. In it 



64 THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 

there is nothing that is not finite ; but the mind 
perceives beyond every limit, however far extended, 
into space indefinitely stretching. 

The mind seeks for plan and unity in all phe- 
nomena. It compares analogous or opposed ideas, 
eliminates some, identifies others, till it has suc- 
ceeded in discovering an underlying element of 
similarity which enables him to classify all creatures, 
and marshal them in their families and species and 
orders. 

Truth is the clear view of every existence in its 
exact relations to every other existence. Error 
arises from the relations being misconceived in their 
proportions or position. To God alone all things 
are visible in all their relations ; the perspective of 
relations exists in the world which does not suffer 
us to see them thus, yet the mind is ever seeking 
to see things as they are, and not foreshortened. 

It is ever straining to behold things as they are 
to God. Why so ? Because it sees the idea of 
truth in all creation. And the beautiful is the true. 
The soul rejoices in the beautiful, because that 
which is beautiful is, that in which all the relations 
are seen in just order. A discord thrills with pain, 
for in it we have a note out of its due place, a 
colour too intense, too harsh for its surroundings. 

Why does beauty delight ? Because the mind's 
eye sees order as one of the thoughts of God. If 
the mind saw not the general abstract idea, it could 



THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 65 

not derive pleasure from its concrete expression in 
the rainbow or the flower. 

I have now shown why God created the world. 
I have shown you that it was, it could be, through 
no caprice that it was created. That He created 
from no want in His nature, and that, therefore, 
the object for whom He created must be sought 
elsewhere. 

I have shown you that as creation is the articula- 
tion in sensible signs of the Divine ideas, that great 
speech is addressed to some one. 

That some one I show r ed you must be man, and 
that to understand the ideas underlying and vivify- 
ing the sensible signs — the objects of creation — 
man must have a spiritual as well as a material 
nature. 

I have shown you that man is possessed of such 
a nature, and that he can and does read the 
thoughts of God through the works of God. 

Therefore man solves the enigma of creation. 

But I have only shown for whom God has 
created this phenomenal world. There is yet 
something more to be exhibited, and that is the 
motive actuating God in regard to man whom He 
created : Why did God reveal His thoughts to man ? 

There is but one motive conceivable, and that is 
Love. 

Was it a guess of the ancients, or was it a revela- 
tion, that they declared Eros, Love, to have founded 

F 



66 THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 

and formed the world ? No ! it was no guess. For 
a guess which is true, ceases to be a guess, and 
becomes a revelation. 

The motive actuating God was love — love to 
man then existing only in possibility, in idea. 

Of love there are two sorts — the first is that 
whose highest manifestation is found in the mutual 
affection of husband and wife. 

But this arises from either sex being imperfect 
without the other. What is deficient in the nature 
of man — the plastic, emotional, refining element — 
is supplied by the woman ; and what is deficient in 
the nature of woman— the self-reliant, creative, 
spontaneous element — is supplied by man. The 
creative and the plastic elements united constitute 
the complete homo. 

Such love as this has its foundation in an imper- 
fection of nature, and is not, therefore, to be spoken 
of with respect to the motive of creation. 

But there is another sort of love, of which we 
have a sketch in parental affection — a love rising 
out of a nature complete in itself, and pouring its 
benefits on the head of the child, with no selfish 
aim in view, with no thought save for the welfare 
of the dear child. This, I conceive, is the motive 
of creation, love, pure beneficence to man. 

Look where we will, then, we see in all creation 
a love-token of God to us. 

The child kneeling up in bed, watches through 



THE MYSTERY OF MAN, 6? 

the lattice the white moon sailing in the sky, the 
little spirit is filled with wonder. Dim thoughts 
struggle into form in the young mind. When God 
hung the silver globe in the heavens, in the begin- 
ning, He foresaw the rapt awe of the little child, 
and rejoiced therein. 

When the willow first thrust forth her furry cat- 
kins, the Eternal One beheld the village children 
on the cool spring mornings by the pool gathering 
" palm " branches. The wood-anemone strewn in 
the budding copse, the white sorrel under the drip- 
ping bank, the red robin, the blue hyacinth, in the 
wood under the young green leaves ! Have they 
not answered the purpose, the loving purpose, that 
called them forth ? 

I remember a young girl standing under a mul- 
berry tree one summer eve, listening breathless to 
the warble of a nightingale heard for the first time. 
When the egg was laid, and the bird grew, the 
thoughts of God were in that heart swelling with 
ecstasy at the chant of the nightingale in that 
summer night. 

When the earth's strata were bent and broken, 
and their jagged edges were thrust up into the sky, 
draped with glacier, crowned with snow, God fore- 
knew the passionate delight the alpine peaks and 
ranges would afford to many a weary toiler in office 
and study. The Burgundian tyrant Gondecar laid 
a tithe on all the produce of his land, and demanded 

F 2 



68 THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 

of James, bishop of the Tarantaise, his share of the 
tribute. James had neither corn nor wine, nor flax. 
The only produce of his alpine diocese was snow. 
He filled two panniers with it, placed them on an 
ass, drove her to the court of Gondecar, and 
poured his tribute, a snow-drift, over the purple 
stair of his throne. The king sprang up in fury, 
and exclaimed at the " vile offering !" "It is not 
vile," answered the saint, " but thou hast not learned 
to value it." 

The time of alpine snow has come ; age after 
age has seen it powdered on the mountain peaks, 
slide down the flanks in ice, and flow away in rivers 
to the sea, unesteemed save for the water it yielded. 
But its time has come, its value is known. There 
is no medicine to weary brain like the golden light 
on a distant bank of alpine snow. 

You may remember the verses of a distinguished 
authoress, on the artist with a thought, a message 
to men throbbing in his brain. She bids him grave 
his thought in stone figure and flower on the 
cathedral portal. And years will flow by, men — 
the soldier, the statesman — come and go, the 
market women pass the portal, but the sculpture 
yields not up its thought, till the poet for whom it 
was destined stands before the gate. 

' * Then, I think, those stony hands will open, 
And the gentle lilies overflow, 
With the blessing and the loving token 
That you hid there years ago, 



THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 69 

And the tendrils will unroll and teach him 

How to solve the problem of his pain, 
And the birds' and angels' wings shake downward, 

On his heart and spirit tender rain. 
While he marvels at his fancy, reading 

Meaning in that quaint and ancient scroll, 
Little guessing that the loving carver 

Left a message for his weary soul." 

And have not the Alps been such a thought in the 
divine mind ? a thought full of beauty, tenderness, 
and love to the clerk and the student, unfolding 
now, and speaking health and peace and faith to 
his soul ? 

I remember a mountain scramble, leading me 
suddenly from rough rocks and sear grass upon a 
dell of rich green-sward, girt about with pines. 
Set in the turf was here and there a fallen star — a 
yellow anemone, on the rocks the carmine alpine 
rhododendron was in full blaze of blossom, and 
over all the sward was a tender bloom of blue 
forget-me-not. Overhead burnt a glacier in the 
summer sun, and a thread of silver fell in powder 
from it, waving in the soft air. I am not ashamed 
to tell you that that vision filled my heart to over- 
flowing. God spake through that scene, through 
every flower, out of the mountain, out of the ice. 
The voice of God walking in that garden was as 
audible as of old in Paradise, when Adam heard it 
in the cool of the day. 

Every flower declared His love, His beauty, His 
perfection. Forget-me-not was the bloom cast over 



70 THE MYSTERY OF MAN. 

all ; it was the whispered appeal of God ! the voice 
still and small. Forget Thee, my God ! Forget 
Thee ! 

Creation, then, is the manifestation to man of 
the thoughts of God, and that manifestation is 
made in love. Inorganic life is a prophecy and 
preparation for organic life. Organic life supposes 
man to read and interpret it. 

" See through this air, this ocean and this earth, 
All matter quick and bursting into birth. 
Above how high progressive life may go, 
Around how wide ! how deep extend below. 
Vast chain of being ! which from God began, 
Natures ethereal, human, — angel, man, 
Beast, bird, fish, insect which no eye can see, 
No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee, 
From Thee to nothing/' — Pope. 

Man is the explanation of creation. Looking 
back, the world is inexplicable without God ; look- 
ing forward, it is an enigma without man. 



V, 

PRIMEVAL MAX. 

A NEW science, scarce thirty years old, has made 
its appearance, and has established itself in our 
midst, which has already made strange revelations 
relative to the antiquity of man, and threatens to 
overthrow tradition, and disturb our preconceived 
ideas as to his origin. 

Like all sciences which are in their infancy, it 
promises more than it can perform. It must be so 
— a new science, like a new speculation, must 
advertise itself, make exaggerated pretensions, to 
excite interest and arrest attention. 

But without admitting that all its promises are 
possible of fulfilment, we cannot deny that the 
science of prehistoric archaeology, of which I am 
speaking, has already played a considerable and 
brilliant part, and has thrown a flood of light on a 
hitherto obscure topic — the history of primeval 
man. 

If hypotheses have entered too freely into the 
system, and have arrogated to themselves the cos- 



72 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

tume and airs of facts, it is but what one must 
expect in the midst of the excitement and enthu- 
siasm attendant on a novel discovery. 

But in spite of boasts and mistakes, the study of 
human palaeontology has taken rank among the 
positive sciences. It has accumulated already a 
vast number of facts absolutely certain, the syn- 
thesis of which has already in great part been 
effected. Its researches have reproduced on the 
scene the rude and savage life of man in the first 
period of his career ; it has disclosed to us his 
habits, his pursuits. 

It has done more than this. It has accorded 
him an undreamt-of antiquity. By extending its 
investigations beyond the epoch at which the pre- 
sent surface of the globe was formed, before the 
continents assumed the shapes they now affect, and 
the seas filled their present beds, it has carried us 
back to an antiquity which cannot be reckoned by 
years nor by centuries. And it has shown us 
representatives of our species existing through the 
last transformations of the terrestrial crust, before 
the map of the world in the smallest degree re- 
sembled its present appearance. 

In a science in course of formation, which is 
daily advancing, but is also daily revising and 
modifying preceding conclusions ; in a science 
which reposes on an infinity of facts of detail, 
established independently by diverse observers, it 



PRIMEVAL MAN, 73 

is impossible but that errors should occasionally 
slip in, and affect its generalizations, which it will 
require time and scrupulous care to correct. 

But after making allowance for this, there re- 
main certain conclusions which it is not possible 
any longer to dispute. Such is the dogma of the 
existence of our species on the earth throughout 
the geologic period designated " quaternary." The 
anterior existence of man during a portion of the 
"tertiary" period is on its way towards being 
established by proofs of great solidity, though not 
as yet sufficiently numerous and independent to be 
determined conclusively. 

Now, however, that attention has been directed 
to this point, we may predict that before many 
years are passed, with the progress of discoveries, 
this point also will be demonstrated with the same 
degree of certainty. 

Let us now consider, as briefly as is compatible 
with the interest and importance of the subject, the 
results satisfactorily arrived at, and the conjectures 
that have been formed relative to the origin of 
man, and then we shall be able to estimate their 
bearing on the doctrines of revelation. 

The most ancient vestiges of man as yet found 
have been in the middle of the tertiary period, in 
the superior miocene beds ; and the fauna and 
flora of those beds bear a relation sufficiently close 
to the fauna of the globe at present as to lead us 



74 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

to surmise that the first ancestors of the races of 
man now peopling the earth synchronized with the 
first appearance of the species of beasts now 
extant. 

The flora and fauna of the beds which exhibit 
the first traces of our species, show that Europe at 
that time enjoyed a temperature much more ele- 
vated than it does at present. Central Europe 
basked in a climate resembling that of the tropics ; 
the most northerly portions of Asia, America, and 
Greenland itself, were not then mantled with snow. 
Even within the polar circle, all the unsubmerged 
land' — then much more extensive than at present — 
was covered with dense forests, and enjoyed a tem- 
perature conducive to rich vegetation. In Green- 
land, under latitude yo° N., the Sequoia semper- 
virens ripened, which now is fruitless at Zurich, and 
only flourishes without check on Lake Como. 
Spitzbergen was clothed with woods of hazel, 
poplar, beech, and plane ; and rank forests of 
beeches, oaks, magnolias, and cherry clothed the 
mountain sides of Greenland above Disco Isle. 1 
Huge anthropoid apes resembling the gibbon, the 
four-toed rhinoceros, the gigantic acerotherium, 
prowled about the ancient forests of central 
Europe. 

We have not got very precise information on the 

1 "The Miocene Flora of N. Greenland," by Prof. O. Heer, in 
the Royal Dublin Society's Transactions for i866 8 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 75 

condition of man in the miocene period. All that 
we possess is due to one observer in a narrow 
circle — the Abbe Bourgeois in Loiret and Loire-et- 
Cher. 

Certain flints rudely chipped into scrapers have 
been collected in the calcareous beds of Beauce, 
near Thenay and Selles-sur-Cher. 

We can picture to ourselves the miserable 
savages of that infinitely remote period, living 
under tropical palms and gigantic ferns, on islets in 
the midst of lakes or seas, out of reach of the fero- 
cious monsters that haunted the jungles of the main- 
land, fashioning their scrapers out of the coarse 
flint in the chalky soil — the fine flint and chert of 
which the polished stone weapons were afterwards 
made did not then exist in Beauce — that, having 
killed a beast, with these scrapers they might 
scratch the flesh from the bones, and clean the 
hide. 

Above these calcareous beds lie the sands of the 
Orleanais, also a miocene deposit, but more recent. 
It belongs to the period which saw the arrival of 
the mastodons and dinotheriums. It also exhibits 
relics of man. In that bed have been found the 
same flint scrapers, and even fragments of rude 
pottery. 

In beds, again, superior, but still tertiary, has 
been found the skeleton of a cetacean (halitherium), 
the bones cut and scored by flint knives. Look on 



7& PRIMEVAL MAN. 

the map : see Pouance, where that whale was cast 
on the beach and devoured by men, lying in a fold 
of the hills, towards the east, that stretch from the 
north in La Manche to the Loire in the south, and 
wonder at the remoteness of the period when a 
vast sea occupied the heart of France, when Finis- 
terre was a granite island in an ocean, when a 
mighty channel, wider than the Mediterranean, 
swept from the Caspian with scarce a break across 
eastern Europe, roared round the iron point of 
Norway, and foamed along the Malvern and York- 
shire hills. 

All our knowledge of miocene man is as yet 
derived from the few facts above mentioned. 

A change swept over the globe, or at least its 
northern zones. Slowly the temperature de- 
scended, and the tropical plants disappeared, to 
make way for those of the temperate zone. And 
as the flora altered, the fauna underwent a parallel 
modification. Did the primeval man survive this 
change, and linger on in cooler Europe till the 
glacial period set in and froze him out ? Or did 
he migrate south with the gigantic apes to the 
steamy regions of equatorial Africa ? We cannot 
tell. We have no data on which to found an 
opinion. No traces have yet been discovered of 
man in the deposits of this period. 

In the middle of the pliocene age set in the first 
glacial epoch. The temperature had sunk so low, 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 77 

that vast accumulations of ice formed over the 
north of Europe. Scandinavia, Scotland, England, 
the central plateau of France were wan and white, 
and deathlike. Scarce a leaf showed ; from every 
hill, down every vale crept cold glaciers, grinding 
the rocks, and turning up the soil before them like 
a plough. Even the petty chalk range visible from 
Cambridge, which you have to look over the hedge 
to see, sent a vast sheet of ice to the German Ocean, 
and I live on a mighty heap of its grindings and 
sweepings, where it discharged into the sea. The 
mastodons, and with them trains of ruminants and 
carnivora, emigrated to the south before the ad- 
vancing walls of ice. 

The deposits of this period are mute concerning 
man. They contain no traces of his handiwork. 
A chasm of ages which the mind in vain strives to 
overleap, separates the miocene man from man on 
his next appearance on the scene. 

Through that vast period he remained stationary, 
if he survived it. Century after century and cycle 
after cycle rolled its course, and left him unchanged. 
But where was he ? We do not know. He may 
have gone south, and so the quaternary man may 
trace his filiation from the tertiary man. Or the 
primeval man may have died out before the 
glaciers, and the man who appears in the new age 
may be a new creation. 

With the pliocene period the temperature of 



78 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

Europe again rose, and from thenceforth remained 
much what it is at present ; for from that date the 
flora remains tolerably constant. But the new 
vegetation which spread over the land was very 
different from that which had preceded the period 
of ice. The fauna also was different. The hippo- 
potamus and the horse appear. At the same time 
man reappears, and his arrow heads, bones of 
pachydermata cut or split, show that he lived by 
the chase. The contour of the land was not yet 
quite what it is now. An elevation of the bed of 
the English Channel to 600 feet united the British 
Isles with the Continent. The Thames was then 
an affluent of the Rhine, and fed the sea which 
covered northern Germany and Denmark. To the 
south Sicily was attached to northern Africa and 
to Spain. The Gulf of Obi was the mouth of a 
vast inland sea that washed the roots of the Altai, 
and has left its feeble trace in Lake Baikal. 

Through Sicily passed a stream of African 
migration of beasts ; a hyperborean fauna simul- 
taneously began its travels south, and poured upon 
central Europe across the plains of Russia. Each 
of these migrations consisted of analogous but dis- 
tinct species. From the north came the mammoth 
and the hairy elephant (Elephas primogenius), the 
furry rhinoceros {Rhin. tickoriniis), the reindeer, 
elan, |glutton, and musk-ox ; from the south came 
cne fauna which subsists in Africa, with its peculiar 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 79 

elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami. The 
indigenous fauna of the pliocene period died out, 
with the exception of the cave bear, and some 
others, before the double current of immigration, 
which met over their graves in the British Isles. 
The different phases of this substitution of one 
fauna for another may be traced in the coral crag 
of Norfolk and Suffolk, in the forest-bed of Cromer, 
in the fluviatile beds of Montreuil near Paris, in 
Sicily in the vast accumulations of bones which fill 
the grottos of Syracuse and San Theodoro, and 
which are exported annually in ship - loads to 
Marseilles, for the manufacture of saltpetre. 

At this time were formed these deposits in the 
Yorkshire and Devonshire caverns, which contain 
numerous evidences of man's co-existence with 
these extinct monsters. 

During this period took place also a grand re- 
volution changing the relief of the continents, and 
marking the dawn of a new geologic epoch. 

A steady subsidence, especially noticeable in 
the northern regions, plunged the greater part of 
the north of Europe under water, and floating 
blocks of ice were wafted over the submerged plains 
of Russia, Poland, and Prussia, laden with rocks 
and stones torn from the polar mountains. As 
these floating rafts melted, they discharged their 
burdens on the floor of the shallow sea. The 
British Isles were reduced to an archipelago of 



8.0 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

little isles. Atlas stood up and took the morning, 
and reflected her red peaks in a shallow sea that 
covered what is now the desert of Sahara. The 
great tertiary Atlantis disappeared, Sicily broke 
her connection with Africa. 

The accomplishment of these changes, the mo- 
ment when they attained their maximum of inten- 
sity, open a new geologic epoch, the quaternary. 

It began with a second glacial period, but not 
one of the same intensity as the first. Streams of 
ice filled the valleys of Scotland, Wales, of the 
Pyrenees, the Apennines ; and the glaciers of the 
Alps disgorged upon the plains of Lombardy. One 
is not surprised at finding in the deposits of this 
age the relics of all the species, alive or extinct, 
which characterize the circumpolar regions, and 
which can only live in a cold climate. 

But it must not be supposed that the climate 
was like that of Siberia. The fossil deposits ex- 
hibit an extraordinary mixture of species proper to 
hot and cold zones. The African elephant then 
lived in the forests beside the Rhine ; the two- 
horned rhinoceros, now restrained to the extreme 
south of Africa, laid its bones in Great Britain. 
The African hippopotamus bathed in the Aire near 
Leeds ; a huge lion or tiger — the Felis spelceus — 
with the hysena and the leopard, haunted the plains 
of France. The explanation of this remarkable 
phenomenon is to be found in the fact that at the 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 8 1 

quaternary period the ocean extended farther 
than at present, and wound in and out amidst a 
labyrinth of islands and peninsulas, bearing with it 
currents of warm water, and loading the air with 
vapour. The mountains were covered with glaciers, 
the rivers were swelled to an enormous width, and 
the lowlands and valleys enjoyed a mild steamy 
atmosphere. 

All through this period man lived, and left in- 
numerable traces of his activity in the soil ; and not 
of his activity only, his bones were laid in it as well, 
and by them we are able to reconstruct him in flesh 
and blood. The skulls of Stangenas, of Lahr, of 
Maestricht, of Eguisheim, of Neanderthal, and 
numerous others, prove the existence of two dis- 
tinct types of men in Europe, distinguished by the 
shape of their heads. 

The one race, the dolichocephalic, was tall, with 
elongated skull ; the other race, the brachycephalic, 
was short, with round bullet head. 

It can hardly be said with certainty which of 
these races was the first on the stage. The Euro- 
pean dolichocephalous savages have their analogies 
in the New Caledonians. The type of the pri- 
mitive brachycephalous men is preserved in the 
Esquimaux. 

I need follow no further the history of our race 
as revealed by its remains ; thenceforth there are 
no gaps in it ; but there has been a slow yet steady 

G 



82 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

advance towards civilization. According to the 
lowest computation twenty thousand years have 
elapsed since the appearance of pleistocene man ; 
other calculations throw the date back to a hundred 
thousand. 

And now, before proceeding any further, and 
opening up fresh questions, let us ask whether the 
admission of these facts, and facts they are, contra- 
dict the Biblical record, 

In the first place, let it be remembered that the 
Biblical account and the discoveries of modern 
science on palseontological man have, and can have, 
but few points of contact. The history of the 
primitive ages of man is considered from two oppo- 
site sides. The Bible views facts of the moral 
order, whence it may draw religious instruction, 
whereas human palaeontology embraces facts of the 
material order only. The two domains of faith 
and science adjoin, but are not to be confounded. 

It is argued that two facts which emerge from 
the new discoveries on primeval man ruin the credit 
of the Mosaic narrative. First, in that the origin of 
man is thrown back long previous to the period 
fixed by Biblical chronology ; and secondly, in 
that primeval man is exhibited, not intelligent, 
like Adam and Eve, but in a condition of abject 
barbarism scarcely elevated above brutality. 

The Bible, however, was not written to teach chro- 
nology ; the calculations based on the genealogies 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 83 

of the patriarchs have never proved satisfactory ; the 
Hebrew text and that of the Septuagint vary in the 
number of years attributed to the first fathers, show- 
ing that the original texts were not agreed on this 
point. It is possible, moreover, as has been in- 
geniously suggested, that the names of these patri- 
archs represent, not individuals, but races. This 
was almost certainly the case later, when Arphaxad 
is so termed as " a dweller on the confines of the 
Accads," the primitive Turanian race in Chaldsea ; 
and Israel is used often as the name of a nation, 
though it was originally that of its ancestor alone. 

I pass to the second point ; the low point of civi- 
lization at which man first appears on the stage. 

Here a question arises. What is man ? Let me 
offer a definition. It is, perhaps, arbitrary, but if it 
be accepted, it solves a crowd of difficulties. And, 
moreover, it is a definition in accordance with 
revelation. 

Man is that animal, highest in the scale of mam- 
mals, in whom the sense of the infinite first arises. 
In other words, man is that animal in whose breast 
the spark of soul is first elicited. 

What is the Adam of the Mosaic record ? He 
is a man, the first man with a living soul ; the first 
man with the faculty in him of looking beyond the 
bounds imposed by matter, and of seeing God ; the 
first in whom the image of God was reflected. 

I offer this definition with diffidence. But I 

G 2 



84 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

would ask you to consider it well, and see whether 
it is not consistent with the idea of Adam as set 
forth by Moses, and then to note how, if we adopt 
this definition, we are able to admit all the conclu- 
sions of eminent naturalists on the origin of races, 
on their gradual evolution, and to consider their 
speculations without alarm, waiting only to accept 
them till they are established on irrefragable evi- 
dence. 

I. It is observable that in the book of Genesis 
there are hints of the existence of men independent 
of Adam. There are two accounts of the creation 
of man in that book, and it by no means follows 
that the second account is an amplification of the 
former. Cain is said to have had a mark set on 
him, lest he should be slain by the people then 
living on the earth. Who were these people ? 
The sons of Adam, the son of God, — the Adamim 
go in unto the daughters of men, the Goim. It is 
an union of distinct races which is described and 
spoken of as an offence. 

The Biblical narrative is therefore quite tolerant 
of a theory that there were men before Adam, men, 
that is, of human type, with instinct budding into 
intelligence, but not men with souls, with a power 
of perceiving what was beyond the limits of the 
senses, who stood in the same relation to the 
Adamites that the Papuans occupy at the present 
day towards Europeans. 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 85 

2, Such a theory is in conformity with my argu- 
ment, that the law of the world is evolution, that 
the manifestation of the divine idea passes through 
the categories of time, in a series of processions. 

The one divine idea of life differentiates into vege- 
table and animal life. Animal life, starting from 
some elementary form, such as the amoeba, divides 
into the synamoeba and the infusoria. The former 
branches out into the Protasci and the Prothelymna. 
From the former issue the races of sponges and 
zoophytes ; from the latter the worms. The idea 
thence rays off through forms in series reaching the 
classes of echinoderms, articulata, vertebrata, and 
mollusca. The solemn rhythmic march proceeds. 
From the monotremata emerge the ornithodelphians 
and the marsupials ; from the latter the placentalia, 
then the decidua ; the forerunners of the apes, the 
elephants, the lions. From the prasimiae arise the 
simiae ; the miocene period witnessed the apparition 
of the anthropoid apes. Their descendants are 
represented in Africa by the engecco and the gorilla, 
in Asia and America by the gibbon and the ourang. 
Then appears man. Is the progress a genealogical 
tree of man ? That I do not affirm. The paradigm 
I have traced does not necessarily indicate a natural 
filiation, but rather an ideal procession. 

We need not affirm that at a given moment a 
monkey produced a man, but that the general idea 
of the simiae contained in itself among all its possi- 



86 PRIMEVAL MAi\. 

bilities the idea of man, belonging by his anatomical 
structure to the same family as the gibbon and the 
gorilla, but diverging from it in certain structural 
peculiarities, and, above all, by his possession of an 
intelligent soul. 

3. Science asserts, and asserts truly, that there 
exists a gap between the anthropoid apes which 
appeared in the miocene period and pleistocene 
man. It would interject an intermediary species 
of man-apes, walking upright, with modifications 
of the anatomy corresponding to this position, 
without speech, and with instinct hovering on the 
confines of intelligence. 

As Adams and Leverrier, by observing the orbits 
of certain planets, satisfied themselves that another 
world existed, which had not yet been seen, and 
having calculated its position, turned their glasses 
to that point of the sky where they had convinced 
themselves it was to be found, and Neptune sparkled 
into their eyes, so anthropologists conclude from the 
anthropoid ape to the man, that there must have 
been an intermediate species. 

If we accept the doctrine of the procession of 
divine ideas in creation, we may concede this also. 
For the divine ideas never advance by leaps, but 
always in logical progression. One manifestation 
postulates the next, and that which is presupposes 
that which goes before. 

The idea of nerve predicates its manifestations 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 87 

either arranged as a column or as a ring, and thus 
gave birth to the vertebrate and radiate realms of 
life. The existence of the lizard presupposes the 
worm, and the worm the amceba. 

As yet no fossil remains of the primeval man 
{Homo primigenins) have been found ; but if we 
compare the inferior races of woolly-haired men 
with the higher species of anthropoid apes, we are 
led to admit that, at least for the African races, their 
forerunner must have united the characteristics 
intermediate between their forms ; that he must 
have been dolichocephalous and prognathous, have 
had woolly hair, and a dark skin ; that his arms 
were longer and stronger, his legs shorter and defi- 
cient in calf. The brachycephalous precursor of the 
Asiatic races was closer allied to the type of the 
Asiatic apes, with hair not woolly but lank. 

When did this man-monkey race exist ? Was it 
at the miocene period, and is it they who have left 
their traces in the chalk of Beauce and the sands 
of Pouance ? We cannot tell, as no bones have yet 
been found, but it is probable. 

4. I have said that the paradigm of man does not 
necessarily indicate a natural filiation, but rather an 
ideal procession. 

Nevertheless, I am not unprepared to accept the 
modern theory of development by a process of 
natural selection, so soon as it is established on 
sufficiently firm ground. I do not see that to accept 



55 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

the Darwinian doctrine of the descent of man need 
shock religious minds, need be considered as sub- 
versive of what is revealed. 

" Those great modifications of structure and of 
external form," writes Mr. Wallace, " which resulted 
in the development of man out of some lower type 
of animal, must have occurred before his intellect 
had raised him above the condition of the brutes, 
at a period when he was gregarious, but scarcely 
social, with a mind perceptive but not reflective, ere 
any sense of right or feeling of sympathy had been 
developed in him." 1 In other words, man was 
anatomically, before he was spiritually. There 
was a time when there was no soul in man, when 
he was not yet Adam, when the divine likeness 
was entirely in abeyance ; to the eyes of science a 
human being, but not to the eyes of the seer as 
yet a " son of God." 

And is not this a transformation which takes 
place before our eyes, now? Have we not got 
savage races occupying tracts of the earth's surface 
which have never risen from their original brutality, 
through all the ages that have rolled over their 
heads, but in whom, under the influence of civiliza- 
tion at their doors, some feeble glimmer of light 
begins to manifest itself, to be in fact kindled ? 

And if there be now going on this transformation 
of the animal man into the intelligent man, the 

1 * Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection,' pp. 319, 32a 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 89 

spiritual man — a transformation taking place in our 
own selves — is it not probable that there was a 
time when the external pressure of circumstances 
forced certain apes into the anatomical position of 
man ? How remarkable it is that the negro and the 
gorilla in Africa should bear a family resemblance, 
and that the lowest type of Asiatic man should 
have affinities of structure with the Asiatic rather 
than the African apes. 

I do not, however, accept the theory of the 
development of man as completely established, 
waiting till it is confirmed by more conclusive 
evidence. To me, it seems that the Dionysian 
theory of the procession of ideas explains the facts 
of this order which science reveals, without having 
recourse to a direct filiation of species the one 
from the other. 1 

But I cannot think that the Darwinian theory 
is repugnant to Christian doctrine. It is quite pos- 
sible to hold it enthusiastically and be a sound 
Churchman at the same time. How this is possible 
will be better understood when we come to consider 
what Revelation and Inspiration really mean. 

In conclusion, let me briefly restate the theory 
of Man which I suggest as a solution to scientific 
difficulties. 

1 * Creation of Modern Science,' by the Rev. G. Greenwood, 
published by King and Co., 1874, is an admirable tract on the same 
subject. The author arrives at the same conclusions from a different 
point of starting, and through a different chain of reasoning. 



90 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

Adam is the first man in whom the sense of the 
infinite, the spark, that is, of soul, was first struck ; 
the first father of the whole race of intelligent men. 

A beast sees nothing beyond the surface, never 
catches a glimpse of what underlies phenomena ; 
and a two-legged, erect being that sees no farther, 
is, to all intents and purposes, a beast, and no son 
of Adam. 

Are there races of men who have no such sense ? 
If so, they have not yet attained to the stage of 
Adam. Into their nostrils no living soul has yet 
been breathed. For if there is soul, there must be 
chinks through which it stretches out towards the 
infinite. Some day the spark may fall from heaven 
into the dark heart of an Andaman islander, and 
at once a germ of movement and of growth will 
manifest itself, the light will pierce into the heart, 
at first in thin rays, but gradually it will widen 
and brighten, till the transformation is complete. 

Look at the savage Kelt or Teuton. Shut in on 
every side save one, — Religion. Through that one 
opening above came -down a ray of light into his 
abode, obscured by superstition, may be, yet God's 
light for all that. Like the gap in his cabin which 
was at once window and chimney, that opening 
admitted truth and let out error. 

Through that opening our forefathers looked up, 
and saw stars, and stars beyond stars, and in those 
seen, prophecies of stars unseen, leading the spirit 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 9 1 

on and up, away from the dull narrow bounds of 
sense, and educating him to be the father of the 
English of to-day. 

And now, What is our present condition ? Why 
every science, every art opens into infinity. Cre- 
ation is a crystal palace, and the light flows in 
through every wall. 

Wherever there is seen law, goodness, beauty, 
truth, there is an hypostasis of God. Every leaf 
that flutters in the wind, every spider that drops 
down its silken line, every atom that dances in the 
water, or floats in the sunbeam, opens into infinity. 
And man's life has become one of stretch and strain 
towards God through the objects of sense. 

Education, progress, is the law of the life of man, 
as a son of Adam. He who walks in the meadows 
and sees in grass only grass, and in flowers only 
flowers, is imperfect ; he halts between the ape and 
the angel. 

I once heard a farmer's daughter exclaim with 
amazement at the delight and interest which a 
country walk afforded an accomplished lady. To 
herself, the wild-roses were only roses, the blue 
dragon-fly flitting over the yellow flags was only 
a fly. The ape prevailed in one, the angel in the 
other. The one rested at the husk and saw only 
shape and colour, the other perceived beauty and 
design. Every rose-leaf, every dragon-fly opened 
the kingdom of heaven to the daughter of Adam. 



9 2 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

The song of all creation was a sursum corda re- 
sounding in her ears, inaudible to the other. 

And what is history ? A collection of facts 
to the Goim, the revelation of principles to the 
Adamim. 

And art ? The vision of beauty, striven after ; 
and beauty is an hypostasis of God. 

Thus all that is in the world becomes to the true 
man a revelation of the Deity, drawing him out of 
himself, thrilling his soul to its finest fibre, kindling 
in him a hunger which is never satisfied, a longing 
desire which never languishes, till in the great 
expansion of his innermost being, like Lamartine's 
stone-mason of Saint-Point, " He dies of the love 
of God." 



VI. 

BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

i. The Old Testament. 

THREE hundred years ago the conscience of 
Western Christendom, waking under the night- 
mare of the Papacy, put forth an arm to grope for 
something firm, something by clutching which it 
might shake off the haunting dream. Its hand fell 
on the Bible. The authority of the Book was 
marshalled against the authority of the Church. 
Protestantism seized on it as an arsenal of pro- 
jectiles. In response to every anathema and ex- 
communication hurled from Rome, it shot back a 
keen, barbed text from Wittemberg or Geneva. 
To carry on an effective warfare against the 
Papacy, the Reformers were forced, by the logic of 
circumstances, to assume the exclusive sufficiency 
of Scripture, its absolute, unqualified infallibility. 

The formal position of the Reformation is often 
stated as the insurrection of human reason against 
the yoke of authority ; the movement may have 



94 BIBLICAL INSPIRA TION. 

tended in this direction, but it was not this con- 
sciously or avowedly. Its formal and avowed 
basis was an appeal from the Church to the Bible. 
The Reformers rejected traditional belief in favour 
of Divinity speaking through the Document. The 
cogency of their appeal lay in its presenting itself 
as an appeal from the human to the divine ; from 
tradition, now discovered to be the voice of men, 
to a Book, thought to be the Word of God. 

Reason was not consulted dispassionately. It 
was not for one moment suffered to dispute the 
hypothesis to which the whole movement was 
pinned. The claims of reason were not discussed, 
the question lay, in the sixteenth century, between 
rival authorities. The daring innovator who should 
have ventured into the vaults, torch in hand, over 
which the Reformers had built their house, and 
wrangled and passed laws, would have been dragged 
forth, hung, drawn, and quartered as a traitor. 

A very slight acquaintance with the history of 
the Reformation is sufficient to show that the 
hypothesis of the Book owed its victory over the 
rival hypothesis of the Institution to causes ex- 
traneous to any superior probability intrinsic in 
the hypothesis itself. 

At any rate it was inevitable that, when this' 
theory had done its work in controversy against 
Papal supremacy, it should itself, in quieter times, 
be subjected to examination. 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 95 

Reason, called in to expel the Pict and protect 
the Kelt, would in time turn its arms towards sub- 
jugating that which had invoked its aid. 

It was inevitable that those w T ho were told that 
the world rested on a tortoise should ask further 
on what the tortoise stood. 

In surveying the battle-field one is surprised, 
almost amused, to note how wholly untenable the 
Protestant position was before a well-directed attack. 
Its flank was uncovered. On what authority did 
it accept the Bible ? The book had not fallen 
down from heaven like the silver image of Diana. 
It was a bundle of documents selected from amidst 
a litter of others. Who tied the tape around these, 
and rejected the rest ? The existence of the Bible 
as a sacred unit proved that there was a body 
authorized, or which thought itself authorized, to 
make this selection, and to publish a canon. 

Nor was the Roman position less precarious. 
The Romanists admitted the authority of Scrip- 
ture, and pointed to its texts as a basis for the 
claims of the Church. The Scriptures were its 
title-deeds, but then they were deeds of its own 
drawing up. The Church was infallible because 
the Bible said so, but the Bible was only infallible 
because it was authorized to be so by the Church. 
The argument revolved in a circle. 

Thus the whole subject of contest at the Refor- 
mation period amounted to this, which had priority, 



96 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

the egg or the bird ? The bird that laid the egg, 
or the egg that produced the bird ? 

More than three hundred years have passed 
away, and reason, which was sealed up by frost 
after its activity in the sixteenth century, has 
begun once more to flow. Its stream is inevit- 
ably directed against that basis on which Pro- 
testantism built itself a house. 

There are fissures in the walls, widening daily. 
The rector of a church with which I am ac- 
quainted was told that cracks had formed in the 
tower. " Paper them over," was his suggested 
remedy. 

Papering cracks will not mend faulty foundations 
or arrest ruin. This is a truth it behoves us to 
acknowledge and act upon. Unfortunately paper- 
ing cracks is too frequently resorted to, and the 
caution is not uncalled for. 

If there be fissures in the walls, it behoves us [to 
consider whether weight has not been laid on 
ground not calculated, never designed, to bear it. 

It cannot be doubted, I think, that a general 
sense of uneasiness exists in religious minds rela- 
tive to the authority and inspiration of Scripture. 

I am not of course alluding to ignorant religious 
minds which have never studied or thought about 
the questions affecting Biblical infallibility. Igno- 
rance and hesitation are to one another in inverse 
ratio ; no man is so positive on a matter as he who 



BIBLICAL INSPIRA TION. 97 

knows nothing about it. So in the matter of 
Biblical inspiration, none are louder and more 
exacting in their assertions of it than those abso- 
lutely devoid of critical reading. 

But I am alluding to those devout souls loving 
Jesus, the Author and Finisher of their faith, to 
whom the Bible is the dearest book ; to whom the 
loss of the Gospel would be the loss of the sun out 
of their firmament ; to such as these am I alluding, 
who have more or less been brought in contact 
with the current of rationalism ; and who see that 
what they once supposed was a closed question is 
now a crying one. Lothair thought life the simplest 
thing in the world till he entered into it, and felt 
and found how complex it was. 

Two difficulties beset the received, popular, 
doctrine of Biblical infallibility at the outset. 

1. Scientific discoveries contradict, or seem to 

contradict, statements of the sacred record. 
Thence the corollary is drawn, that if the 
Bible be proved guilty of error in matters 
which are verifiable, there is no guaranty 
that it does not err also in such matters 
as escape verification. 

2. Criticism has reduced the Bible to a collection 

of independent documents of various dates 
and description, arbitrarily collected into one. 
Therefore the authority of the Bible as a 
whole is impaired. 

H 



9§ BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

On the first of these points it is not my purpose 
to speak at present. The objections are too much 
matter of detail to be examined in a single lecture, 
and some of them have been touched on in my 
former discourses. 

But the second point admits of being considered 
more briefly. 

Criticism reveals that the Bible is not one book, 
nor is it made up of two parts, an Old and a New- 
Testament, but that it is, on the contrary, a collec- 
tion of from sixty to seventy independent com- 
positions by different hands made at periods far 
removed, under circumstances widely various, in dif- 
ferent stages of civilization and of religious thought. 

Not only so, it shows also that we have not got 
these books in their original form, but glossed, 
interpolated and altered at different times, and with 
different intent. 

Also, that some of them were never even written 
by the persons to whom they are attributed, and 
others never written with the purpose which has 
been thought to justify their position in the canon. 
And that doctrines have been twisted out of texts 
which were unknown to the writers, and prophecies 
pointed out, which prophecies were never intended. 

All these points, and there are many more, are 
used with force to detach minds from traditional 
belief, or if not to detach them, at least to loosen 
their adhesion. 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 99 

The Bible proves to be no homogeneous rock, but 
a congeries of stones drawn from various quarters, 
like the piles of drift which strew the plains of 
Prussia, in which are found fragments from the 
mountains of Spitzbergen, the rocks of Nova Zembla, 
from the Ural and the Dovrefjeld. 

Let us now trace the formation of the dogma of 
Biblical infallibility in its most extreme form, and 
then we shall be able to estimate how much of truth 
it contains, and how much is made up of arbitrary 
conjecture. 

Then, perhaps, we shall find ourselves in a position 
to form some theory of inspiration which will prove 
less faulty at the touch of reason. 

Mosaism never took firm hold of the Hebrews 
through the period from the promulgation of the 
Law to the captivity in Babylon. Its prescriptions 
had not become the mould of their lives, its mono- 
theism had not mastered their minds. If Mosaism 
did not fall into complete oblivion, this was due 
solely to an uninterrupted succession of prophets, 
men who, from the age of the Judges to the fall of 
the kingdom, pleaded incessantly, not for the ob- 
servance of its precepts, but for the acknowledg- 
ment of its revelation of the Divine unity. The 
bias of the Hebrew people was towards idolatrous 
polytheism ; and the prophet was a protest against 
this tendency. 
The Law had fallen into disregard, like canon Law 

H 2 



100 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

in the English Church at the present day ; its com- 
mands were ignored, as antiquated ; its ceremonial 
was modified ; some of its distinctive rites were, 
perhaps, never performed. 

The new moons were still observed, but they 
were equally sacred among the Canaanites ; and if 
the ark was still reverenced, it was, perhaps, be- 
cause the Moloch-worshippers had also their sacred 
coffer, the palladium of every tribe. 

But about four centuries before Christ a radical 
change passed over the family of Israel. One 
might suppose oneself confronting a new people. 
The name is changed, and with the name of the 
nation, its tendency. Hebrews went down to 
Babylon ; Jews rebuilt Jerusalem ; the old title was 
laid aside, and from thenceforth the people are 
known as Jews. But it was especially in its beliefs, 
its religious and moral tendencies, that the change 
in the people is most conspicuous. 

Mosaism in the Hebraic period had never been 
frankly adopted ; now it became incarnate in Jew- 
dom. The Law T which had been violated without 
compunction by the Hebrew, became to the Jew the 
sovereign rule of life. The sons of Israel who had 
been led captives to Chaldaea had for centuries 
gravitated towards polytheism ; from the moment 
of their return to the present day, their monotheism 
has been ineffaceable. 

The Captivity must have cut the Jew to the heart. 



BIBLICAL INS P IRA TION. I O I 

The proof is In the complete transformation it 
effected. The bondage in Egypt and the captivity 
in Babylon, each was the anguish going before the 
birth of a new idea ; the pangs that preceded a 
regeneration. 

Yet those who returned to Palestine by permission 
of Cyrus, did not bring with them these new habits, 
but they brought a disposition wholly new. The 
books of Ezra and Nehemiah exhibit to us these 
returned Jews living in the violation of the most 
positive prescriptions of the Law. Usury, forbidden 
by Moses, was exercised among them with odious 
cruelty ; in less than a century after the return of 
the first colonists under Zerubbabel, it had reduced 
a considerable portion of the population to abject 
misery. 1 

The sabbaths and the feasts, far from being cele- 
brated with decency, were desecrated by markets, at 
which assembled members of neighbouring nations 
with whom Moses had forbidden relations. 2 Mar- 
riages were contracted with Gentile women. 3 The 
members of the sacerdotal tribe, the son of the 
high-priest himself, had set the example. 4 

But though there was no change in the manners, 
there was a complete change in the hearts of the 
people. The iron of captivity had entered deeply 
into their souls. They were conscious that their 

1 Neli. v. I— 13. 2 Neh. xiii. 1-3; Ezra ix. 10-15. 

* Neh. xiii. 23-28 ; Ezra ix. 10. 4 Neh. xiii. 28 ; Ezra x. 18, sq. 



102 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

exile had been a punishment, and their hearts were 
ripe for repentance. But as yet there was only the 
disposition. That Law which was to rule them 
thenceforth was as yet to them unknown. It lay 
rolled up in the custody of the high-priest, covered 
with dust. 

Ezra and Nehemiah inform us that what was 
wanting to the Jews, their contemporaries, was, not 
a ready will to obey, but the knowledge of the Law 
which they were to be called on to obey. 

The infractions of the commandment had been 
committed through ignorance, not through obsti- 
nacy. This is proved by the prompt repentance 
with which the instructions of Ezra and Nehemiah 
were received, by the readiness with which ties of 
family, consecrated by time and affection, were 
broken under the overpowering sense of duty. 

After the calamity which, nearly a century before, 
had ruined the last relic of David's kingdom, after 
an exile, in which the generation which had known 
the ancient order of things had died out, there were 
no longer antecedents, or habits formed, to occasion 
a stubborn resistance to a reformation in conformity 
with the Mosaic institutions. Everything had to 
be begun afresh. 

No other model presented itself for adoption save 
the ancient national legislation. The immigrants 
knew no other, its origin they esteemed divine. 

The small number of the returned exiles, the 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 103 

compactness of the body, facilitated the carrying 
out of a Mosaic restoration. Above ninety years 
passed, however, before a decided step was taken. 
Years they were, not without their lesson, deepening 
in the hearts of the colonists their yearning for an 
organization. The little settlement languished, 
exposed to absorption and disappearance among 
the surrounding peoples ; their language, their 
traditions, their beliefs were slipping from them ; a 
few more years, and they would have melted into 
the mass of Gentiledom. The fear haunted them, 
but it also paralysed them. 

A chief was wanted who, by the force of his 
character, the exaltation of his faith, could impose 
his enthusiasm on the colonists and quicken their 
dispositions into actions. That man appeared in 
time. It was Ezra. But alone he might have 
failed to accomplish the task he had set himself as 
he mused by the banks of Euphrates. He went up 
with deliberate purpose, "Ezra had prepared his 
heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and 
to teach Israel statutes and judgments." l 

Fourteen years passed, and yet little was accom- 
plished, when Nehemiah, a Jew, inspired with the 
same love of his nation, and faith in its destiny, 
came to Jerusalem, appointed governor of the 
colony by the Persian king. Thenceforth, with one 
heart, the scribe and the governor wrought toge- 

1 Ezra vii. 10. 



104 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

ther to create Judaism. One was the head, the 
other the arm, in this undertaking. Jewish tradi- 
tion, the echo of the general opinion in these remote 
times, has sacrificed Nehemiah to Ezra, and has 
attributed to the latter the origin of all the insti- 
' tutions which thenceforth gave to the people of 
Israel its permanent stamp. 

As Moses was the father of Hebraism, Ezra was 
the father of Judaism. 

I need not relate to you the solemn production 
of the roll of the Law, the reading of it in the ears 
of all the people, the oath administered to them, 
and roll call of the covenanters. There is scarcely 
a more thrilling page in history, sacred or profane, 
than that which describes the triumph of Ezra. I 
know of but one scene like it, the Scottish Covenant 
of 1638. Each marked an epoch, was a hinge on 
which the destiny of a nation turned. From that 
feast of Tabernacles, when the people assembled as 
one man in the street of the Watergate, to this day, 
Jewdom has been not so much the witness to an 
idea, as the incarnation of a Book. 

The prophets had upheld the Idea, the lawyers 
were the ministers of the Book. The success of the 
prophets had been but partial, because spasmodic ; 
that of the lawyers was complete, because syste- 
matic. Enthusiasm had done its work, it had 
handed on the lamp ; and now routine accomplished 
what enthusiasm had begun. 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 105 

By a chain of circumstances which it is not 
necessary for me here to particularize, the Hebrew 
language ceased to be understood by the Jew, and 
the tongue which, in the days of Hezekiah, 1 had 
been unintelligible to them, became their ver- 
nacular. 

The process was in course in Ezra's time ; as he 
read the Law, he was attended by interpreters, occu- 
pying the same pulpit of wood. ' 

Hebrew having become a dead language, the 
lawyers, or scribes, became an important and in- 
dispensable body in the new community. They 
were not necessarily priests, they were not often 
nobles ; every class, and trade, and profession 
yielded sopherim, who made the Law their study, 
and the interpretation of it their occupation and 
delight. 

The fact of the Law being in the dead tongue of 
their race consecrated to them that ancient lan- 
guage. Every extant fragment of the literature of 
the golden age of Hebrew greatness and culture 
was carefully collected, and the divine unction 
which rested on the writings of the Lawgiver rolled 
down to and hallowed the skirts of that extinct 
literature. 

Now, what was this Law, which had been pre- 
served, and which stood so high in the estimation 
of the people ? It was that code of rules given to 

1 Isa. xxxvi. 1 1 ; 2 Kings xviii. 26. 



106 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

Moses, which we find scattered through the books 
of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These 
books critics tell us did not then exist in their 
present forms, that probably no narrative was mixed 
up with the regulations, that the Law was a code 
and nothing more. 

But other books existed, such as the " Wars of the 
Lord," Y which contained the narrative ; and as the 
significance of the regulations depended much on 
the incidents which had called them forth, the 
narrative, it is supposed, was melted in with the 
code, and thus constituted the books of Exodus, 
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 2 

It is necessary to bear clearly in mind that in 
asserting the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, we 
do so solely on the opinion and authority of the 
sop her im of three or four centuries before Christ. 

Papyrus rolls had survived the ruin of the Temple, 
each roll was but a leaf of a rush, every leaf was 
separate ; all remembrance of their original connec- 
tion was lost, and Ezra and those who laboured 
with him to restore the observance of the Law had 
also to restore the text of the Law. What, then, 
more natural than that they should take one leaf 

1 Num. xxi. 14. 

2 According to Rabbinic tradition the ancient books had been 
lost at the burning of the Temple, but Ezra wrote them down from 
recollection. This is not true, but it shows that the Jews were 
aware that Ezra had a great hand in the recomposition of the 
Pentateuch. 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 107 

from, say the Law, and another from the "Wars 
of the Lord," another from the " Book of Jasher," 
another from the u Songs of Moses," and weave 
them into a consecutive narrative ? 

At the present day we have the library of Assur- 
bani-Pal laid up in the Temple of Nebo, discovered 
at Koujundjik. It is composed of inscribed tiles, 
piled in volumes ; but tiles belonging to one volume 
have found their way into other heaps, and it is a 
work of extreme difficulty and nice critical discrimi- 
nation to sort the brick pages into their several 
positions. 

This was what Ezra and those who laboured 
with him had perhaps to do with the volumes 
of ancient Hebrew literature that had survived 
the wreck of the Temple ; but instead of having 
tiles to sort, they had the loose leaves of rushes 
to piece together. 

The Law was given to Moses, there could be no 
doubt about that ; and when, with the regulations of 
the Law, a record of the events which called them 
forth was intertwined, the whole was given the 
sanction of the name of Moses. Such modern 
criticism asserts to have been the origin of four of 
the books which constitute the Pentateuch. 

The book of Genesis, a compilation of the early 
traditions of the race, a book of unknown origin, 
and of remote antiquity, containing, as it did, so 
much to interest the Jew, so much of importance in 



108 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

establishing his position in the world as a witness 
to God, was naturally attributed to the only writer 
of the first age of Hebrew literature with whom the 
Jews were acquainted. It was necessary to elevate 
that book into an authoritative place, and it was 
therefore conjectured, then it was asserted, and 
finally was generally believed, to have been written 
by Moses. 

Thus the work of composing a canon advanced, 
Books of the most diverse aim were enrolled in it. 
The Song of Songs, for instance, which, if we may 
trust some recent commentators, was one out of a 
number of similar poetical dramas performed at 
weddings ; the only relic of a popular character 
which survived the Captivity, was invested with 
the attribute of inspiration. 

Job, the Faust of ancient Hebrew poetry, but the 
Faust with a different climax and opposite moral, 
was interpolated with the speech of Elihu to bring 
it into accord with the new Jewish sentiment, 
against which the whole tenor of the book was a 
protest, and so altered was numbered with the 
Scriptures. 

Even Ecclesiastes, the sad lament of a voluptuary, 
received canonization. 

The interpreters of the Law springing up from 
every class served to root the Law more securely in 
the popular affections. Synagogues were esta- 
blished, in which the Pentateuch was read on the 



BIBLICAL INSPIRA TION. 1 09 

sabbaths, and its interpretation became the highest, 
nay, the only aim of Jewish intellectual life. 

The interpreters of the Law, at once theologians 
and jurists, were those who slowly and surely 
formed the national character. They wove the 
web of the Law round the life of every Jew, so as 
completely to envelop him, and control his action 
from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning 
till he closed them at night. There was no moment 
too private, no act too insignificant, into which the 
lawyer did not penetrate with his rule. 

The Jews became more and more firmly con- 
vinced of their mission, of the uniqueness of their 

a 

situation in the world. 

Impressed with the one absorbing conviction 
struck from their consciences by the blow of the 
Captivity, that they could only survive as a nation 
by rigidly minute organization, and finding a frame 
for this organization in their Law, it became a 
national necessity for them to make that Law 
infallible. From it they spun the web, fine and 
enduring as the thread that bound Fenrir, in which 
they have since been entangled. Talmudism in the 
realm of moral and social regulation, Cabalism in 
the region of theologic speculation, are the creation 
of the national spirit, the fatal, logical creation out 
of the hypothesis of the infallibility of every word 
and letter of the Law ; a hypothesis the national 
spirit was forced to frame to preserve its existence. 



1 1 BIB LIC A L INS P IRA TION. 

The lawyers, therefore, were the expression of this 
national sentiment. They were never false to it. 
Priests and nobles at times turned traitors to their 
country and their religion, but never a lawyer. 

Times had changed since the fresh simple days 
when the Pentateuch had been written ; a very 
different order of civilization now prevailed. Intel- 
lectual conceptions were as changed as manners 
and the social situation. As a manual of belief, 
the Pentateuch did not suffice ; as a moral and 
judiciary code it contained a large number of pre- 
scriptions absolutely inapplicable, whilst there were 
no dispositions for a crowd of contingencies called 
into existence by new social relations. 

It was necessary, therefore, to supplement the 
Pentateuch by other books. That these books 
must be written in Hebrew was the universal con- 
viction. And thus the need and the patriotism of 
the Jews served to exalt every extant fragment of 
the old literature into a position of authority. The 
rabbis set themselves to interpret this collection 
thus formed, and to wring from its texts rules to 
regulate every act of which man is capable, and to 
extort precepts for every emergency. 

The Talmuds of Jerusalem and of Babylon are 
the accumulation of these interpretations, monu- 
ments to all time of the folly of devotion to the 
letter without regard to the spirit, of the perils that 
encompass exegesis unaccompanied by criticism. 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. Ill 

Thus, then, in the period between Ezra and the 
Christian era, grew up the theory of Biblical infalli- 
bility. 

In the year 312 before Christ, Ptolemy I., after 
having taken Jerusalem, carried away with him to 
Alexandria a colony of Jews. 

Voluntary migrations augmented this colony. 
The Alexandrine Jews acquired the same civil 
rights as the Greeks, obtained the monopoly of the 
corn trade, and increased rapidly in number and 
prosperity. 

They had left Jerusalem before Rabbinism had 
set hard. They took with them the sacred books, 
but they did not carry with them the extreme 
theory of the infallibility of every sentence, word, 
and letter, for that theory had not as yet been 
formed, — it was in process of formation only. 
Alexandrine Judaism developed an exactly oppo- 
site current of religious life from that which 
flowed in Palestine. It was philosophic, expansive, 
catholic. It used the sacred text for a purpose 
wholly opposed to that which animated Pales- 
tinian Judaism. 

It brought into prominence the grand eternal 
doctrines of the unity of God, of creation, of provi- 
dence, of the immateriality of God, but the minute 
ceremonial regulations it disregarded, the narratives 
it sublimated into spiritual allegories. It did not 
shrink from altering the text in such theophanies 



1 1 2 BIBLICAL INSPIRA TION. 

as seemed to it inconsistent with the doctrine of 
God's infinity and immateriality. 

When Christianity appeared, and Jews of Pales- 
tine and Jews of Alexandria passed into it, each 
brought with them something of their past pre- 
judices or persuasions with which they had been 
invested from their infancy. As Simon Peter girt 
his fisher's coat about him when he left his boat 
and swam to Christ, so did these converts hug 
their prejudices when they deserted their. ancestral 
communities for the Church. The Palestinian Jew 
brought with him his theory of the infallibility of 
Scripture, the Alexandrine Jew his method of 
Scriptural interpretation. 

The latter reappears in all its extravagant capri- 
ciousness in the writings of Origen, and then of 
the Latin mediaeval commentators, till it died 
exhausted by its exaggeration. Now we are able 
to regard Scripture with a more just, less ideal, 
eye, and are prepared to treat the allegories we 
draw from the narrative as the play of pious fancy, 
not unfruitful, indeed, but not as forming the 
essence and kernel of Scriptural interpretation. 

The Rabbinic theory of Biblical infallibility 
reached its apogee at the period of the Reforma- 
tion, determined then, as in the period of its first 
formation, by the exigency of circumstances and 
of controversy. 

To put aside what is extravagant, and retain 



BIBLICAL INS P IRA TION. 1 1 3 

what is wholesome in this theory is that which is 
incumbent on us now. The question demands 
review with a sober eye. 

From one side and the other, unquestionably, we 
shall meet with condemnation. For one we grant 
too much, for the other too little to Divine inspiration. 

But truth lies balanced between extreme and 
opposite poles. 

One thing it is very necessary for us to remem- 
ber. However much the Reformers may have pro- 
tested against tradition in some matters, they relied 
implicitly on it in others, — they invested tradition 
with infallibility at the very time that they rejected 
its authority. 

For the claims of the Pentateuch to be the com- 
position of Moses rest on no other grounds than 
the tradition of the Jews, and that tradition sprang 
out of the conjecture of certain obscure lawyers of 
the third century before Christ, whose very names 
are forgotten. 

Our canon of sacred writings of the Old Testa- 
ment is traditional ; it has been accepted unhesi- 
tatingly from the precursors of the Talmudic 
rabbis — men with the minimum of critical know- 
ledge — men blind to the incomparable grandeur of 
the documents they chose or rejected, actuated by 
no appreciation of their merits, their antiquity, or 
their authenticity, but impelled by a narrow, petty 
spirit of national bigotry and conservatism. 

I 



1 1 4 BIBLICAL INS P IRA TION. 

What I have said may surprise and startle some 
of my hearers, but I beg them to understand that I 
am laying down facts, not stating opinions. 

Facts they are, and we do well to acknowledge 
them. We receive the Pentateuch as the works of 
Moses on the guess of ignorant Jewish rabbis, 
utterly unqualified to pronounce an opinion on 
their authorship. We accept our Old Testament 
canon on the same authority. 

Mind me ! I believe with all my heart that God 
inspired the ancient poets and lawgiver and pro- 
phets of the old Hebrew golden ages of literature, 
and that He used the narrow-minded rabbis of a 
later age to conserve to the time when the deposit 
should become the treasure of the Church, these 
inexpressibly valuable relics. But this does not 
alter the facts above stated. We invest the igno- 
rant lawyers of the period between the restoration 
and Christ's coming with infallibility, when we un- 
hesitatingly accept their assertions, and denounce 
as unbelievers those who call them in question. 

The sticklers for Biblical infallibility are, in fact, 
the canonizers of the sopherim of the Ezraic revival. 
Reduce their assertions to a statement of plain 
facts, and it amounts to this : We believe that 
those lawyers who carried out Ezra's work, who 
recomposed the scattered fragments of the old 
Hebrew literature, were divinely inspired. Who 
they were, however, w r e do not know. 



BIBLICAL INS P IRA TIOX. 1 1 5 

From earliest childhood we have been accustomed 
to see the Bible as one book bound within two 
boards, and it is only by an effort that we can 
throw ourselves back mentally into the ages when 
that one book was in process of formation. Seeing 
it as an unit has led to ignorant conceptions con- 
cerning the Bible, and it is of the utmost importance 
that the history of the formation of the book should 
be impressed upon us, lest we fall into prevalent 
superstitions concerning it, and become the ready 
prey of modern scepticism which can easily dispel 
the superstition, and therewith will scatter the truth 
that underlies it. 

Nothing will conduce more to successful de- 
fence of the verities of our Faith, than the cutting 
down of the scrub that encumbers the ground and 
serves as cover to the enemy. We battle to hold 
points which it is impossible to maintain, and it is 
a mark of good generalship not to extend his line 
to cover these points, nor to convert them into 
keys to his position. 

The success of infidel agitators in our factories 
and dockyards among intelligent workmen consists 
in their representing these points as pivots of Chris- 
tianity ; they ruin the credibility of the latter by 
demonstrating the fallacy of the former. 

It is because we do not know our own ground, 
which we are set to defend, so well as do the 
invaders, that routs are so frequent. 



VII. 

BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

2. The New Testament 

In my last lecture I traced the history of the 
formation of the theory of Biblical infallibility, 
chiefly with reference to the Old Testament. I 
propose in this lecture to give a brief sketch of the 
formation of the canon of the New Testament, to 
show that this underwent a process somewhat 
analogous to that which the canon of the Old 
Testament passed through ; and then, having cleared 
the way by a statement of historical facts, to see if 
we cannot form some theory of inspiration and 
revelation which will not be in defiance of facts, 
and which will satisfy the conscience. 

It does not appear, from a perusal of texts, that 
the Apostles held their writings to be specially in- 
spired, nor did the Church during the first two cen- 
turies attribute peculiar inspiration to them. The 
Gospel was orally delivered, and became traditional. 
When Churches were founded, those who presided 



BIB LIC A L INS P IRA TION. 1 1 7 

over them were intrusted with this oral teaching, and 
not with written documents. The numerous terms 
used in the New Testament to designate the teach- 
ing of the Apostles, have all reference to instruction 
by word of mouth ; everywhere we have speaking 
and hearing, preaching, proclamation, tradition, not 
once writing and reading, except in reference to the 
books of the Old Testament. And even long after, 
when the Apostles had passed away, this preference 
for oral over written testimony remained. " I do 
not think," writes Papias, friend of some who had 
been disciples of the Lord, " that I have learned so 
much from books as from the living surviving 
voice." l It is certainly remarkable that S. Paul in 
enumerating the gifts of the Spirit should say 
nothing concerning the inspiration of the writer, 
but only speak of the prophetic gift of the speaker, 
a sure token that then the part the penman was 
to play in the Church was undreamed of; that 
a written revelation was not what the Apostles 
intended as the basis of Christianity. 

The character of the epistles written by S. Paul, 
S. Peter, S. John, and S. James, is such as to 
preclude the idea that they thought them formal 
declarations of the Spirit to guide the Church for 
all time. The letters were called forth by tran- 
sitory circumstances, by short-lived disorders in a 
Church, by private interests, as the running away 
1 Euseb., ' H. E.,' in. 39. 



1 1 8 BIBLICAL INS P IRA TION. 

of a slave, or the interference of a Diotrephes. 
They were addressed to individual Churches or 
persons, and were intended for them alone, unless 
otherwise expressed. 

They were not designed as exponents of doctrine 
or as codes of morals. They were ephemeral 
productions, which would have perished, but that 
the love and reverence of the Churches or persons 
to whom they were addressed preserved them, 
Some certainly have been lost. 

In the sub-apostolic age, though the Fathers, in 
their writings, use sentences or expressions from 
these epistles, they never quote them textually as 
if they were authoritative. The only apparent 
exceptions are where they address Churches to 
which the Pauline epistles had been originally sent, 
and then they appeal to these letters only to show 
that the expostulations now addressed were in 
tone the same as those already uttered by the 
Apostle, their founder. 

Clement of Rome, the disciple of S. Paul, does not 
hesitate to invoke the " blessed " Judith, beside the 
" blessed y) Paul, placing on the same footing writings 
which we regard as widely parted. And it is re- 
markable that when the apostolic Fathers cite the 
epistles they never use the formulae, " // is written" 
"As says the Scripture" but that they do thus quote 
apocryphal books. In this manner Clement intro- 
duces a passage from the second book of Esdras ; 



BIBLICAL INSPIRA TION. 1 1 9 

and the author of the epistle of Barnabas quotes as 
Scripture a passage in a lost prophet, and another 
apocryphal prophecy as " written in the Scriptures.'' 

S. Ignatius also quotes as a saying of the Holy 
Ghost, " Do nothing without your bishop." 

The case of the Gospels is otherwise. It seems 
that no written Gospels were in the first age re- 
ceived as canonical to the exclusion of others. 
Probably every Church had its collection of sayings 
and doings of the Lord, taken down from the oral 
teaching of the Apostles ; and these, in Justin's 
time, and probably long before, were read at the 
celebration of the Holy Eucharist. But none was 
stamped with oecumenical authority. Some of 
these collections were fuller, others less complete. 
The smaller collections were being daily amplified 
by the addition of maxims and anecdotes contri- 
buted by other Churches with fuller collections. 

The proof of this statement cannot be entered on 
here. I have established it elsewhere. 1 Suffice it 
to say that writers of the first three centuries do 
not always quote the Gospels we account canonical, 
but do cite Gospels which are now lost ; and that 
some of the Fathers were unacquainted with our 
canonical Four. 

We may safely conclude that by A.D. 130, or 
thereabouts, though writings of the Apostles were in 
circulation, none were appealed to as authoritative 

1 See my [ Lost and Hostile Gospels.' Williams and Norgate, 1874. 



120 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

revelations of the mind of the Spirit, and that no 
collection of these writings had been made. 

If we look to writers between A.D. 130 and 
A.D. 180 we see the same fact transpire, but already 
we notice a trace of the apotheosis of the apostolic 
writings. 

In the celebrated letter to Diognetus there are 
almost no quotations, but there are tokens of 
acquaintance with certain of the writings of the 
Apostles ; only once is S. Paul cited textually with 
the formula " the Apostle says," but the formula in 
this case contains no theologic element. One re- 
markable passage, however, occurs in this letter 
which must not be passed by. In speaking of the 
Word revealing Himself, the author says, "Thence- 
forth the fear of the law is sung, the grace of the 
prophets is recognized, the faith of the gospels is 
edified, the tradition of the apostles is protected." 
This is the first instance of the Gospels being men- 
tioned in the plural. At the same time it must be 
remembered that the term "Gospels" does not 
necessarily apply to the Four, but may refer to the 
crowd of other Gospels then extant, most of which 
have since disappeared. It is observable also that 
the faith of the Church is shown to be the tradition 
of the Apostles, and that no mention is made of 
their writings. 

Melito, bishop of Sardis, lived in the second 
century. Amongst his writings was one on the 



BIBLICAL INSPIRA TION. 1 2 1 

Apocalypse of S. John. This is the first instance of 
a commentary on one of the books of the New 
Covenant, and it is significant that the book chosen 
to be commented on is the Apocalypse. Why so, 
I shall state presently. 

Claudius Apollinaris, bishop of Hierapolis, a 
contemporary of Melito, insisted that Jesus had not 
eaten the Paschal lamb before his death, for He 
suffered on the day on which the Jews ate it ; and 
he appealed to the Gospels in testimony that it 
was so. It is evident, therefore, that Apollinaris 
was only acquainted with S. John's Gospel, and 
others which agreed with the Fourth Evangel on 
this point, and that he was ignorant of the synop- 
tics, where the contrary is maintained. 

Dionysius of Corinth, who lived very little later, 
mentions the reading of epistles in the assemblies 
of the faithful ; not, indeed, the epistles of Apostles, 
but letters sent from one Church to another. If, 
then, the letter of S. Clement, dead sixty years 
before, was, as he says, publicly read, it is probable 
that in the same Church the epistles of S. Paul to 
the Corinthians would be also read. 

Apollonius, a writer against the Montanists, of 
the same period, quotes the Apocalypse, and also 
a saying of the Lord, which is not found in any 
extant Gospel, showing that at his date the number 
of the Gospels was not fixed canonically. Athena- 
goras, moreover, who died A.D. 177, exhibits a cer- 



122 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION, 

tain familiarity with S. Paul's writings, and he gives 
a quotation from Our Lord's discourses which is not 
in our canonical Gospels, and is therefore taken 
from another Gospel, now lost. 

The letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne 
to those of Asia Minor, written in 177, also shows 
an acquaintance with S. Paul's epistles, without 
quoting them textually ; only once does it give an 
extract preceded with the formula, that it is in 
"'the Scripture," and in this instance, singularly 
enough, the passage is from the Apocalypse. 

The Pastor of Hermas, written about A.D. 160, 
which was afterwards inserted in the canon of some 
Churches, although it tacitly alludes to passages in 
the synoptics, the epistles of S. Paul, and the first 
of S. Peter, nowhere prefaces a quotation with the 
famous " Sicut scriptum est," except once, and then 
it is to quote from an apocryphal book, " As it is 
written in the Book of Eldad and Medad." Justin 
Martyr (A.D. 140) deserves more particular attention. 
With him the supreme criterion of evangelic truth 
is the argument drawn from the prophecies. The 
prophets are the sure witnesses to Christ ; the 
Gospel is true because the prophets spake before of 
it. Justin was unacquainted with our four Gos- 
pels ; all his references are either to a lost Gospel, 
probably that of the Hebrews, or to the fragmen- 
tary memorabilia of Our Lord's sayings and acts, 
read, as he tells us, at the celebration of the Divine 
liturgy every Sunday. 



BIB LIC A L INS P IRA TION. 1 2 3 

To Justin the Old Testament writers are alone 
inspired ; neither Gospels nor Epistles are appealed 
to by him as such, — the latter indeed are never 
cited at all, and the Gospels only as an historic 
record of facts wrought in accomplishment of 
prophecy. 

But Justin did recognize as inspired other works 
beside those in the Old Testament, and as such he 
speaks of the Apocalypse of S. John, of the revela- 
tions of the Sibyl, and of a lost prophet Hystaspes. 
Justin also expressly declares that the seventy 
translators of the Hebrew Scriptures were inspired 
by God. 

Theophilus of Antioch (A.D. 180) is the first 
ecclesiastical writer to mention the Gospel of S. 
John ; but it is remarkable that fifty years before, 
this Gospel had been commented on by a Gnostic 
writer. 1 Tatian, a disciple of Justin Martyr, wrote 
a book called by some a Diatesseron, and by others 
a Diapente. It has been appealed to as a proof 
that the Four canonical Gospels were then known 
and recognized, and that of these Tatian formed a 
harmony. But this is begging the question. Ac- 
cording to one account, the book was made up of 
five narratives which he harmonized ; but we do 
not know that any one of the canonical Gospels was 
employed in the compilation. The book was a 

1 Yet he does not venture to class S. John's Gospel among the 
Holy Scriptures. That term he reserves for the Old Testament 
alone: "The Sacred Scriptures, and other spiritual writers, of 
which latter John," &c. 



124 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

Gospel, a sacred narrative composed from four or 
five independent sources, the collections, probably, 
of four Palestinian and Syriac Churches. This 
Gospel or Harmony of Tatian was in use till late. 
For in the fifth century Theodoret found it in the 
hands of the Catholics in his diocese. He collected 
as many as two hundred copies, and replaced them 
by the canonical Gospels. 

The very first instance we have of a collection of 
epistles was that made by the heretic Marcion. 
He had a Gospel, 1 and what he called an Apos- 
tolicon, which contained the following epistles in this 
order, Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, Thessalo- 
nians, Laodiceans, Colossians, Philemon, Philippians. 

The " Canon of Muratori " is found in a MS. of 
the eighth century, copied from an earlier MS. It 
is a list of books read in the church to which the 
writer, an African, belonged. It is not an authori- 
tative list, but a private one, by an unknown writer, 
of apparently the end of the second century. The 
portion of the MS. containing an account of the 
Gospels is unfortunately imperfect, but there is 
mention of Luke and John ; then the writer passes 
to the Acts, and says that they do not contain the 
passion of S. Peter and the journey of S. Paul into 
Spain, which must be read elsewhere. 

1 This Gospel I have shown in my ' Lost and Hostile Gospels ' to 
have been the first edition of S. Luke's Gospel, before it had been 
subjected to revision. 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 125 

This is the first direct mention of the Acts of the 
Apostles in ancient literature. 

Then the writer goes on to name the epistles of 
S. Paul in this order, Corinthians, Ephesians, 
Philippians, Colossians, Galatians, Thessalonians, 
and Romans. The epistle to the Laodiceans and 
that to the Alexandrines (he probably means the 
epistle to the Hebrews) the African Church to which 
the writer belonged did not, he says, read. 

He next enumerates the epistle of Jude, and two 
of S. John, but in ambiguous terms, as if they were 
apocryphal. 1 The epistle of S. James and the two 
of S. Peter he did not know T . 

Then he names the two Apocalypses of S. John 
and S. Peter as received, but some, he says, refused 
to read them in the Church. 

If we turn next to Irenaeus we find him quoting 
as " Scripture " the epistle of S. Clement and the 
Pastor of Hermas. 

Tertullian gives an exalted place to some of the 
books we now acknowledge as canonical, but he 
relegates the epistle to the Hebrews to a position 
not of authority, but of edification, classing it with 
the Pastor of Hermas. His list of sacred writers 
consists of the four Gospels, the Acts, the epistles 
of Paul, one of S. John, and the Apocalypse ; it 

1 " Epistola sane Jude et superscrictio (sic) Johannis duas in 
catholica habentur et sapientia Salomonis ab amicis in honorem 
ipsius scripta." For et read probably ut. 



L 



126 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

was without the epistles of S. Peter, the second of 
S. John, and those of Jude and James. The epistle 
to the Hebrews he held to have been written by 
S. Barnabas. 

Clement of Alexandria quotes from the books 
then in use in his Church ; its canon included the 
epistle to the Hebrews, attributed to S. Paul, not 
the epistle of S. James ; it contained also the epistle 
of Barnabas, the Pastor of Hermas, the epistle of 
Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, the Preach- 
ing and Apocalypse of S. Peter, the traditions of 
Matthias, and the gospel of theEgyptians, all which 
are apocryphal. In quoting from these he intro- 
duces the texts as drawn from "the Scriptures." 

By the fourth century a tolerable consensus of 
opinion had been formed on the respective merits 
of the apostolic writings. 1 The Revelation of S. 
John, after having been regarded as the only inspired 

1 The most ancient extant manuscript of the Greek Bible is the 
Codex Sinaiticus : it contains the canonical and apocryphal writings 
of the Old Testament, and with the canonical books of the New, the 
epistle of Barnabas and the " Pastor " ; the Alexandrine Codex adds 
the epistle of S. Clement. The Clermont Codex of the seventh 
century contains thirteen epistles of S. Paul, and a list of the books 
accounted canonical ; it contains the usual books of the Old Testa- 
ment to Chronicles, then the Psalms, and five books of Solomon 
(including Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus), sixteen prophets, three books 
of the Maccabees, Judith, Esdras (i. e. Nehemiah), Esther, Job, and 
Tobit. The list of New Testament works comprehends the four 
Gospels in this order, Matthew, John, Mark, Luke, then the epistles 
to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, to Timothy, 
Titus, Colossians, Philemon ; two of S. Peter, S. James, three of 
S. John, that of Jude, that of Barnabas, the Revelation of S. John, 



BIB LIC A L INS P IRA TION. 1 2? 

book of the New- Covenant, came to be considered 
as of doubtful authenticity, and had to struggle 
against unjust suspicion raised by its association 
with other Apocalypses of more than questionable 
genuineness. 

By the third century also the writings of the 
Apostles had assumed a position of authority, and 
were regarded as inspired. Yet tradition main- 
tained its place as superior, as that to which final 
appeal was made. 

This is no gratuitous supposition ; it is a fact 
attested by all the organs of the Catholic Church, 
as it emerges victorious from its contest with 
Gnosticism. 

To prove this assertion it is necessary to make 
citations, and one is embarrassed by the number 
that offer themselves. The "rule of faith," which 
united and directed the Church, consisted in a pro- 
fession of belief in the one God who created the 
world and of His Son, the Word, who appeared in 
the fulness of time, born of a woman, a Virgin 
mother, who preached a new law, died crucified, rose 
from the grave, ascended into heaven, sent down 
the Holy Ghost to guide the Church which He had 
founded, and would come at the last day as judge. 

This was Christianity, the rule, the canon of the 

the Acts of the Apostles, the Pastor, the Acts of S. Paul, and the 
Revelation of S. Peter. It did not contain the epistles to the Philip- 
pians and to the Thessalonians. This in the seventh century ! I 



128 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

Church. 1 Christian faith was a matter of facts, not 
of books. 

No doubt the faithful desired to know more 
details than were supplied them by their Creed, but 
this was all that was necessary. The study of the 
details would be matter of curiosity, of edification, 
but not of vital importance. 2 

Consequently, far from appealing to Scripture 
to establish doctrines on a ground on which victory 
would be uncertain, the primitive Fathers invariably 
appealed to tradition, and if they referred to the 
writings of the Apostles, it was only to show that 
they accorded with Catholic tradition. 3 

Beyond the accepted faith, " all Scriptural study 
served only to upset the stomach and the brain." 4 
Heretics could always wriggle out of a contest 
through the aid of texts. There was, therefore, 
but one mode of confuting them, and that was by 

1 Regula fidei, kclvoov iKK\r](ri(TTLK6s. 

2 li Ignorare melius est, ne quod non debeas noris, quia quod debeas 
nosti. Fides tua te salvum facit, non exercitatio scripturarum. Fides 
in regula posita est, habens legem, et salutem de observatione legis ; 
exercitatio autem in curiositate consistit, habens gloriam solam de 
peritiae studio. Cedat curiositas fidei, cedat gloria saluti." — Tertull., 
' De Prsescr. Hseret.,' c. 14. 

3 " Ergo non ad scripturas provocandum est, nee in his constituen- 
dum certamen quibus aut nulla aut incerta victoria est .... nunc 
solum disputandum est, cui competat fides ipsa ? a quo et per quos et 
quando et quibus sit tradita disciplina qua hunt Christiani ? Ubi enim 
apparuerit esse veritatem disciplinae et fidei, illic erit Veritas scriptu- 
rarum et expositionem et omnium traditionum." — Tertull., Ibid., c. 19. 

4 "Nihil proficit congressio scripturarum nisi ut aut stomachi 
quis ineat eversionem aut cerebri." — Ibid., c. 19. 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 1 29 

pointing to the unaltering traditions of the Church, 
preserved as a sacred deposit by the bishops whom 
the Apostles instituted, or their successors. 1 

It is unnecessary to multiply citations. The 
Catholic Church held steadfastly throughout the 
Early Ages to this opinion — an opinion not un- 
reasonable, inasmuch as for three hundred years 
tradition remained constant, whereas the canon of 
Scripture was in a state of flux, some books being 
regarded as canonical here and rejected as apocry- 
phal there ; and also, because the Church existed 
before a line of Scripture had been written, and 
Scripture, when written, was only the echo of 
primitive tradition. 

We must now consider the reasons which led 
the Church eventually to canonize the writings of 
the Apostles. 

As time passed, the eye looked back from the 
pettiness and distractions of the present to the 
past, and magnified the perfection and grandeur of 
the first founders of the Church. It was a natural 
feeling ; nations have their heroic age, the age of 
Arthur, of Charlemagne, of Barbarossa, and the 
Church had its heroic age also, that of the Apostles. 
As centuries elapsed, the writings of these founders 
of the Church would naturally be treated with 

1 Tfy TrapddocTLV rcoy airocroXoiiu iv irdcrr) iKKXrjcriq Trdpecmv kva- 
yvcopicraL ro7s raXrjOf) bpav efle'Aoucri, Kal e^o^e*/ /caTafufyte?v roiis 
virb tqqu airoffToAwp Karacrradeuras iincrKoirovs Kal rods diade^a/^evovs 
avTols ews Tifxwv. — Iren., ' Adv. Haer.,' in. 3. 

K 



130 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

respect, then with awe ; first as expressions of 
opinion to be listened to reverentially, then to be 
heard as infallible oracles. 

But the Church would, perhaps, never have 
attached such an importance to the fragments of 
the literature of the first age, had not her attention 
been directed to it by the Gnostics. It is a remark- 
able fact, that the Gnostic heretics, a sect heathen 
rather than Christian, were the first to appeal to 
these Scriptures as ultimate authorities. 

The Gnostics sought some ground on which to 
erect a fantastic theology of aeons and emanations. 
The living tradition of the Church they could not 
touch. What authority could the Gnostics pit 
against Catholic tradition ? They seized on the 
New Testament Scriptures, and claimed them as 
witnesses to their error. The Apostles, said they, 
had taught Gnosticism, their successors had sub- 
verted their teaching. It was the first instance of 
the Bible against the Church in controversy. 

Thus, the first commentary ever written on a 
Gospel was that by a Gnostic on S. John's; 1 
S. Paul's writings these heretics hailed as redolent 
of Gnosticism. To the Old Testament they would 
not appeal, as, according to their doctrine, it was 
the work of an inferior, if not of an evil, principle. 

1 Papias wrote a commentary on the sayings of the Lord by 
Matthew, but not on the First Gospel, which was not then com- 
piled, or at least not known to him in its composite form. 



BIBLICAL INSPIRA TION. 1 3 * 

They were, therefore, forced to exalt S. Paul and 
S. John into positions of infallibility, and their 
scriptures as criteria of truth, — past revelations 
of the divine Spirit, opposed to the living inspiration 
of the Church. 

When the existing Gospels did not suit their 
purpose, they added to them or fabricated others ; 
at least they were accused of doing so. But the 
fact of the accusation, true or false, proves that the 
ground on which Gnosticism opposed the Church 
was the same as that occupied many centuries later 
by Protestantism against Catholicism — the claim 
to be scriptural rather than traditional. 

This appeal by the Gnostics to the Apostles and 
Gospels necessitated a vindication of their ortho- 
doxy from the doctors of the Church. Their 
attention was drawn to the holy writings, and they 
laboured to show that the genuine teaching of the 
Lord and of the Apostles was consistent with 
the traditional faith, and not opposed to it, as the 
Gnostics contended; and that those books which 
did not thus harmonize with Catholic doctrine were 
impudent forgeries. 

The writings of the Apostles are the first link in 
the chain of tradition. To interpret them one 
must be in communion with the Church and par- 
take of the Spirit. The holy tradition could subsist 
well enough without paper and ink, and if the 
Apostles had written nothing, appeal would be to 

K 2 



1 3 2 BIB LIC A L INS P IRA TION. 

the tradition of the Churches they had founded, 
without chance of error. 1 

In A.D. 190 Serapion, bishop of Antioch, found 
that the Church of Rhossus in his diocese used a 
Gospel attributed to S. Peter. He suffered it to be 
read, till it was told him that it favoured Docetic 
views of our Lord's person. He at once forbad the 
use of the Gospel. He did not ask if it were 
authentic or not, but whether it agreed with the 
traditional faith of the Church, and because it did 
not do so, or he thought that it did not, he con- 
demned it. 

In the synoptical Gospels there was apparently an 
account of a solemn anointing of our Lord after His 
baptism. That some such a rite took place at the 
time, we learn from a fragment of the Gospel of the 
Hebrews which has been preserved, and it was on 
account of this that He received the name of Christ 
— the Anointed One. But the Docetae fastened on 
this incident, and built their heresy upon it. It 
was therefore expunged from the Gospels, and the 
gap filled in S. Luke's by an unmeaning gene- 
alogy. 2 

1 TloXXh ZQvt) rwv fiapfidpoov r&v ets Xpicrrbv TriorrcvSj/roop x^P^ 
Xaprov Koi fxeXavos yeypafM/j,evr)j/ exovres dia irp. cty. iv to?s Kapdiais 
r)]v (rwrrjpiav Kal tV apxoLiav irapofioo'iv (pyXdorcrovres. — Iren., III. 4, 

§2- 

Ovk ap* eSet irpbs ras apxaiordras a7ro8payue?j/ e/c/cATjctas . . . . 
Xafielv rb acrcpaXh Kal evapyh. — Iren., III. 4, § I. 

2 I have shown this pretty conclusively in my ' Lost and Hostile 
Gospels.' 



BIBLICAL INS P IRA TION. 1 3 3 

S. Jerome and S. Epiphanius tell us plainly 
that the Catholics cut out certain passages from 
the Gospels, which they thought gave occasion 
to error, or which they thought were interpolations. 

All this shows that both Gospels and Epistles 
were regarded by the Primitive Church in a very 
different light from that in which we now view them. 

Theophilus of Antioch, in A.D. 180, does indeed 
attribute to the authors of the Gospels the same 
divine inspiration which moved the prophets among 
the Hebrews, and the Sibyls among the Greeks, 
and he calls a saying of S. Paul "the divine word," 
but when comparing the writings of the Old Testa- 
ment with the Gospel of S. John, he calls the former 
" Sacred Scriptures," and refuses to rank with them 
the divine Apostle. 

It is unnecessary to follow farther the fortunes 
of the books which now constitute our New Testa- 
ment. The collections of different Churches were 
compared, and by degrees those which the majority 
regarded as of undoubted genuineness came to be 
held in the highest respect, and hesitation charac- 
terized the treatment of those which were not in 
general circulation. 

The Abyssinian Church, at the present day, has 
not the same canon as the Greek, or the Coptic, 
or the Roman Church. The Roman has not the 
same canon as the Anglican Church, In the third 
and fourth centuries every diocesq had its canon, 



134 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

formed, not authoritatively by Council, but by acci- 
dent, or the choice of the bishop. 

A constant sifting went on, and little by little the 
chaff was blown out, leaving only wheat 

But the canon has been ever in flux. Books 
which we treat as apocryphal, primitive Churches 
accepted as authentic ; and books which we believe 
to be genuine they rejected as apocryphal. 

It is necessary, before we go any farther, to con- 
sider what was the idea of inspiration held by the 
Church in the apostolic age and in the two or three 
centuries that followed. 

Of this there can be no doubt. 

The Holy Ghost was given to the Church and to 
every baptized member of it, so that the whole 
Church was inspired ; every Christian was under 
its influence. 

But what direction did this inspiration take ? It 
took one — the preservation and transmission of the 
truth. The truth revealed by Christ was the heri- 
tage of the Church, and this was orally delivered to 
the baptized, and expounded by the bishops. The 
Church, by virtue of her inspiration, was assured 
that this deposit would never be corrupted. 

Consequently the Gospels fell under the condi- 
tions of ordinary and general inspiration ; they 
contained the truth, because what they related 
accorded with what the Church held traditionally. 
Where a Gospel did not agree with this traditional 
faith it was rejected, or altered without compunc- 



BIB LIC A L INS P IRA TION. 1 3 5 

tion. The epistles, moreover, were inspired, but 
so were all epistles from bishops or Churches ; the 
epistle of the Church of Rome to the Corinthian 
Church, the epistle of Clement, were read as in- 
spired, because the Roman Church and Clement 
were inspired, and the epistles of Paul and James 
and Peter stood on precisely the same footing. 
They were the expression of the thoughts and 
feelings of the first bishops, higher in honour, as 
founders, but not more fully inspired than Clement 
or Ignatius or Polycarp ; for the same Spirit which 
breathed on Paul breathed also on Clement with 
undiminished effluence. 

But there was one form of inspiration special and 
extraordinary, which the early Church set apart, 
and regarded in a very different light. This was 
the spirit of prophecy. 1 This inspiration left un- 
touched doctrine and past facts ; it was confined 
to future events. This alone was the miraculous 
outpouring of the Holy Ghost, distinguishing him 
who had it, and elevating his utterances above 
all others. Consequently the primitive Church 
regarded the Apocalypses of S. John, of S. Peter, 
of Enoch, the Testament of the twelve Patriarchs, 
and the dreamings of the Sibyls as supremely in- 
spired. It is this which accounts for the singular 

1 Philo Judaeus, "On Drunkenness" (xxxvi.), gives us the pre- 
vailing idea of inspiration in this century : * ' Those under the 
influence of Divine inspiration have the soul excited, as if it were 
frenzied, and the body becomes ruddy and fiery, ... so that many 
foolish people fancy them to be intoxicated." — Cf. Acts ii. 15. 



136 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

fact that the Revelation of S. John is the first book 
of the New Testament which is spoken of as in- 
spired. Towards the fourth century these Apoca- 
lypses had fallen into disrepute, and the Revelation 
of S. John suffered from the reaction ; so that it 
had to struggle for recognition. 

Such, then, whether we like them or not, are the 
plain facts of the history of the light in which the 
early Fathers viewed the canonical books now com- 
posing our New Testament, and of their fortunes in 
the first three centuries. 

A knowledge of these facts will prevent us from 
falling into those errors which are so common, only 
because ignorance is one of the commonest of 
things. 

We have now cleared the way for the formation 
of a theory of inspiration which will not run counter 
to facts. 

1. The current book theory, that the New Testa- 
ment, divinely inspired in every line, is that on 
which the whole of Christianity rests, it is very 
evident will not hold water for a moment in the 
presence of facts. 

For, 1st, No such book existed in the first ages ; 
even now its contents are not settled. The Church 
existed and throve without the book, portions of 
the Church for two centuries were without one 
single document now found in the New Testament, 
and read other . documents which have since been 
lost. 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 137 

2ndly, Men in different ages have decided what 
books to choose and regard as divinely inspired, 
and what books to reject as apocryphal. And we 
owe our New Testament to the authority of Cran- 
mer, Ridley, Latimer, &c, who chose to accept 
such and such documents, which also happened 
to be used and accepted by the Roman Church. 
They received these documents on the authority of 
the Roman divines ; and relying on them implicitly, 
they rejected books which are read as divinely in- 
spired in other branches of the Church. 

If the book theory be true, then the Roman 
divines who drew up the canon of the New Testa- 
ment are made infallible. 

So also, to accept the Jewish canon of Old Testa- 
ment writers infalliblizes the rabbis who compiled 
it after the Captivity. 

According to the Protestant theory, then, certain 
unknown Jewish rabbis and certain Roman pontiffs 
were infallibly guided in the selection of the books 
which the English binder puts between two boards, 
and stamps " The Bible." 

This theory carries its impracticability on its face. 
We will have nothing more to say to it. 

Let us come to close quarters with the ideas of 
Revelation and Inspiration. 

2. Revelation is the manifestation by God to 
man of truths man cannot discover by the aid of 
reason. 



' 



138 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

Revelation cannot include those matters which 
are attainable by intellectual process, for if so, God 
by revealing a truth would be arresting in its pro- 
gress that reason He has given, — He would be 
undoing His own work. 

The existence of God, as I have said elsewhere, 
escapes demonstration. Every attempt to prove 
this proposition rests on a petitio principii, is 
built on arbitrary hypotheses. One demonstration 
after another has been constructed, and succes- 
sively ruined. Every one possesses a vulnerable 
heel. 

The Incarnation, again, is an undemonstrable 
verity. No amount of miracles, no moral miracles 
even, performed by Christ, could establish His 
divinity to the human intellect. For the mind of 
man cannot embrace the conception of the God- 
head in all its relations ; therefore it cannot realize 
its union with the manhood. The Incarnation is a 
revelation, or it is nothing. 

3. Revelation involves Inspiration. For revela- 
tion being the manifestation of a super-rational 
truth, that revelation must be made to a man, and 
that man who is the organ of the Spirit, to commu- 
nicate the truth to the world, is inspired. 

Inspiration, then, is the investing of certain men 
with the office of proclaiming revealed truths to 
other men. 

Inspiration is therefore for a definite purpose — 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 139 

the conveyance to the world of truths which could 
only be obtained through revelation. 

From this it follows that outside of this purpose 
the organ of inspiration is liable to error. Thus : 
The author of the epistle to the Hebrews was in- 
spired to draw the line between the ceremonial law 
which was fulfilled, and the moral law which was 
permanent ; but inspiration did not prevent him 
from falling into error as to the position of the altar 
of incense. 

And it by no means follows that because God 
chose a certain man as the organ for revealing His 
truth, that inspiration obliterated his natural cha- 
racteristics, imperfections of temper, or intellect, or 
education. 

Thus : S. Paul was inspired to declare to the 
world the divinity of the man Christ Jesus and the 
mystery of the Atonement. But inspiration did 
not prevent him from using hasty language about 
the elder Apostles, or enable him to conduct an 
argument to its end without lapsing into digressions 
and losing the thread of his reasoning. 

4. We may append a corollary. 

As certain of the truths which it is necessary for 
man to know are historical facts, subject to obser- 
vation, and subject therefore also to inaccurate 
observation, inspiration extends to the record of 
such facts, and is a guaranty to men that the re- 
cords of these facts are substantially true. 



HO BIBLICAL INSPIRATION, 

Consequently, if it be necessary for us to know 
that Christ was born of a virgin, died really, rose 
from the tomb, and ascended into heaven, then we 
may rest satisfied that such records as we have 
received of inspired writers contain true narratives 
of these events. 

But, inasmuch as the minor particulars of these 
events are not of fundamental importance, therefore 
we have no certainty that inspiration has extended 
to these to the same extent. 

For instance : There are serious discrepancies 
in the accounts of the Resurrection by the four 
Evangelists, which it is impossible to reconcile. 
Of the fact of the Resurrection we can entertain no 
doubt. The Evangelists were inspired to record 
that ; but as the order in which the women went to 
the sepulchre, the hour at which Christ rose, are 
not matters of essential spiritual importance, affect- 
ing salvation, into them human inaccuracy may 
have crept. 

5. Revelation involves an inspired Body to con- 
serve it. If revealed truth be necessary for all 
ages, then there must be a permanent inspiration 
to declare it, to maintain the deposit uncorrupt. 

If the Bible were a book which fell from heaven 
complete in itself, then there might be no need for 
a Church ; but as we know that the Bible is com- 
posed of a number of independent documents, 
selected from among a host of other documents, 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION, 14* 

which the Church rejected, it is evident that the 
Church must be inspired to choose aright, or there 
is no guaranty that we have a revelation of God 
in those books now bound up by her in one volume, 

As a matter of fact, we know that no such a 
thing as an isolated Book of Revelation existed 
without a living inspired Body. 

The revelation existed, and the inspiration was 
given, before a line of writing was composed. 

To the Hebrews was revealed the unity of God, 
the fact of the creation of the world by God, and 
His providential government of mankind. This 
was their Tradition, their Creed, revealed to them 
from of old. The Jewish Church was inspired to 
maintain this sacred deposit ; and by virtue of its 
inspiration, and in illustration of this revelation, it 
collected and preserved all such books as contained 
narratives of their history exemplifying God's pro- 
vidential government, and prophetic sayings which 
proved the continuance of inspiration in the Church. 
By virtue of this inspiration, those who returned 
from captivity recomposed in the Pentateuch the 
fragmentary records of their past. The work may 
have been that of ignorant lawyers, but for all that 
it was the work of an inspired Church, so that we do 
not receive the Old Testament writings on the autho- 
rity of certain obscure scribes critically incompetent 
to perform their task efficiently, but on the authority 
of a Church animated by the Holy Ghost. 



1 42 BIB LIC A L INS P IRA TION. 

So also with the New Testament. Historically 
we know that the ultimate appeal was to Apostolic 
Tradition. That was the revelation, the sacred de- 
posit. This is matter of fact, I beg you to observe ; 
it is no conjecture. It is a fact to which primitive 
Christianity bears witness with one voice. There 
were Gospels innumerable, prophetic revelations, 
and apostolic epistles without number. Every 
Church had its own Gospel, the echo of what it had 
been taught orally of the Lord's deeds and words. 
But none of these was authoritative. The only 
authoritative revelation was the Truth delivered in 
" a form of sound words " to the Baptized, 1 and 
expounded by the bishops. "Nobody," says S. 
Augustine, " commits this to writing that it may 
be read : rather let your memory serve for a manu- 
script, that you may be able to repeat without any 
chance of forgetting what has been delivered to 
you with so much pains." 2 

And Rufinus says, " The last of their (the Apos- 
tolic) ordinances was that these things should not 
be written on paper or parchment, but retained in 
the hearts of the faithful, that it might be certain 
that none had learnt them from reading, but from 
Apostolic Tradition." 3 



1 The giving of the Creed to the Baptized was called the Tradi- 
tion. The Baptized was then questioned what he believed, and he 
repeated the Creed ; this was called the Reddition. 

2 ' Serm. ad Careen./ § 1. 3 In Hurtley, 'De Fide,' p. 105. 



BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 143 

I have trespassed so long on your time to-day 
that I must conclude in few words. 

If the Tradition of the Church be the Divine 
Revelation, according to the theory of primitive 
antiquity, then we may with composure listen to 
the disclosures of critics relative to the books which 
compose our Bible. The critics of to-day are only 
doing what theologians for the first sixteen centuries 
thought themselves justified in doing — examining 
the authenticity of these documents, pointing out 
interpolations here, forgeries there. An Armenian 
prelate is at perfect liberty to question the genuine- 
ness of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs 
now read in his canon ; or an Abyssinian to dispute 
the authenticity of the book of Enoch, which he 
has been taught to regard as one of the Sacred 
Scriptures ; or a Roman Catholic to doubt the 
canonicity of the book of Judith ; or a Protestant 
to express his opinion that the second epistle of 
S. Peter is a forgery of the second century. 1 

So long as a book agrees with the Revealed 
Deposit it may be read for edification. Revelation 
is not compromised if a book read in the Church be 
proved apocryphal, for revelation is independent of 
texts ; at least according to Primitive teaching. 

In England we are singularly ignorant of the 

1 Didynius of Alexandria, A.D. 392, says of it, " Non est igno- 
randum prassentem epistolam esse falsatam quse licet publicetur non 
tamen in canone est." The Greek is lost. 



144 BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. 

results achieved by the biblical critics of Tubingen, 
Jena, and Strassburg. The names of Baur, Volk- 
mar, Reuss, Colani, Scholten, Hilgenfeld, are 
scarcely known to us. But we cannot go on in 
this ignorance. The press will reveal to English 
people what has been done abroad in this field of 
inquiry, and before it our faith will be like a vessel 
beset with hummocks of ice in a gale. The old 
theory, which has been so smooth and white and 
firm, will go to pieces before the breath of criti- 
cism, and will grind us and cast us into the depths. 
It is therefore imperative on us to fall back to 
primitive views of Revelation as into a safe harbour, 
and let down our anchors where there is a firm 
floor. 



VIII. 

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. 

In his ' Confessions/ S. Augustine draws a lively 
picture of the distress and perplexity that his mind 
underwent in its efforts to account for the presence 
of evil in the world ; and he bitterly reproaches 
himself for not having perceived that evil has no 
real existence, that it is only the absence of good. 

He adopted the Stoic view of evil, a view neither 
comforting nor satisfactory. 

Later in life he found occasion to alter his 
opinion, and to pronounce in favour of the positive 
nature of evil, so far, at least, as human action 
is concerned ; and he was driven to the hypothesis 
that the real cause of evil was to be sought in the 
freedom of the will. This conclusion was forced 
on him by the repugnance he felt to attribute to 
the perfectly good Being the direct authorship of 
evil. 

From the same premises, Marcus Aurelius drew 
a conclusion which denied the positive existence of 
evil. If the whole universe, he urged, proceeds 

L 



246 THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. 

from an intelligent Being, it is impossible to con- 
ceive anything in it which is evil ; that is to say, 
which is opposed to the perfection of the whole. 
Those things which we imagine to be evils are only 
inferior forms of good. 

But Aurelius seems to have derived as little 
satisfaction from his theory as did Augustine. 
Through the meditations of the Emperor transpires 
a settled melancholy, only thinly veiled by the 
stately indifference of the stoic. As for Augus- 
tine, he does not affect to conceal how wretched 
the whole subject made him, " I was crushed 
down and stifled under these thoughts. I sought 
concerning evil, and I sought ill ; and in my search 
I saw not evil" 

The problem which depressed and bewildered 
Augustine and Aurelius is one, the solution of 
which has been incessantly sought ever since ; and 
we may say with confidence, that no solution of it 
has been w T holly satisfactory. 

If we deny the real existence of evil, so as to 
free the infinitely good God of any part in the 
production, in the authorship, of evil, then we fight 
against one of the most primary, general, and 
firmly-rooted convictions of the conscience, we 
blow up the foundations of morality. 

If, on the other hand, we allow the positive ex- 
istence of evil, then we make God more or less 
directly responsible for the evil that is in the world. 



THE MYSTER Y OF E VI L. I 47 

If, again, to escape this difficulty, we exalt evil 
into an independent sphere, and attribute it an 
origin outside of God ; then we give to the uni- 
verse two principles, one good, one bad, in inces- 
sant conflict. We fall into Mazdeism, 

If, again, we regard the infinite God as the 
source of spirit, and evil as resulting from the 
union of spirit with matter — if we consider evil to 
be the yielding of the former to the seductions of 
the latter, and good to be the emancipation of the 
soul from the fetters of carnal appetites, then we 
make matter evil, having its source in evil ; there 
are in this case two principles, one spiritual, the 
other material. We fall into Manichaeism. 

Mazdeism and Manichaeism have been the Scylla 
and Charybdis through which the Church has had 
to make her way. Each theory is so simple, so 
easily comprehensible, so plausible, that it has 
obtained ready adhesion from unphilosophic minds. 

There was an historical reason also, why this 
should be the case. 

From the fourth century before Christ Jewdom 
was divided into two strongly marked sections, 
the Palestinian, with its centres at Babylon and 
Jerusalem ; and the Hellenistic, dispersed through 
Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, with its centre at 
Alexandria. 

These two divisions, as I pointed out in my sixth 
lecture, were governed by entirely distinct and 

L 2 



148 THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. 

opposite principles ; for each section was exposed 
to opposite influences. 

When Zerubbabel led up some of the exiles from 
Chaldsea, it was only the poor and ignorant who 
followed him. The wealthy and learned remained 
at Babylon ; and though afterwards, when Jerusalem 
recovered some of its ancient prosperity, and be- 
came the centre of the Rabbinic revival and organi- 
zation, many Jews, no doubt, returned to the holy 
city, yet Babylon and Pumbeditha retained flourish- 
ing colonies, which throve under the patronage of 
the Persian monarchs. 

The Jews who returned to Jerusalem with Zerub- 
babel, and afterwards with Ezra, had not been long 
enough acquainted with the Persians to be affected 
by their religious doctrines. But it was not so 
with the large body that remained. Mazdeism 
presented too many points of resemblance to 
Mosaism, not to disarm the suspicion of the rabbis 
of Babylon and Pumbeditha ; and the large and 
important school of exegesis formed on the banks 
of the Euphrates, unconsciously became infected 
with Mazdean doctrines. The Babylonish school 
was regarded by the Jerusalem school as rigidly 
orthodox, and the intercommunication of teachers 
and ideas between both was frequent : thus the 
doctrines of Zarathustra gradually infiltrated the 
whole body of Palestinian rabbinism. Jewish de- 
monology was the result of this intercourse. 



THE MYS TER Y OF E VIL. 1 49 

In the book of Tobit, a production of the Baby- 
lonish Jews, Aishma-deva, a Zoroastrian div, appears 
as a Rabbinic devil. 

The demonology of the Jews of Palestine and 
Babylon took a distinct form two centuries before 
Christ. It was then only that the serpent which 
tempted Eve w r as interpreted to be an incarnation 
of an evil spirit. 

Some commentators have supposed that the 
Azazel to whom the goat charged with the sins of 
the people was devoted, was a devil. " And Aaron 
shall cast lots upon the two goats ; one lot shall 
be for the Lord, and the other for Azazel." l . But 
the word Azazel has no roots in the Hebrew 
language, is a foreign word, and only reappears in 
the book of Enoch, w r here a fallen angel is called by 
this name. Not once does it recur in any of the ca- 
nonical or apocryphal writings of the Old Testament. 

The book of Job, composed probably in the 
south of Palestine, at a very early date, and cer- 
tainly outside of the influence of the Mosaic law, if 
it did not precede its enunciation, is the first to 
mention Satan. But in that book Satan is not a 
devil, but an accusing angel, belonging to the same 
category as the angels of destruction who wield 
the sword of plague and death. 2 

1 Lev. xvi. 8, io. 

* 2 Sam. xxiv. 15, 16 ; Ps. IxxYiiL 49 ; xxxv. 5, 6 ; 2 Kings xix. 
35 j Isa. xxxvii. 36. 



15° THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. 

According to the doctrine of the Jews before the 
captivity, the angels of God were divided into 
classes ; and the function of one class was the 
execution of the judgments of God. Such was the 
angel who smote the first-born of Egypt, such 
the angel who was arrested at the threshing-floor 
of Araunah. And to this class belonged Satan. 
In the Psalms the name Satan occurs, but never as 
that of a devil, it is used simply as " an adversary/' 
" Let mine adversaries — Satans — be clothed with 
shame," " For my love they are become my adver- 
saries — Satans," " Let an adversary — -Satan— stand 
at his right hand," &C. 1 

In Zechariah, Satan is represented as an accusing 
angel of the high-priest, Joshua ; approaching very 
nearly to the place given him in the book of Job. 

In the first book of Chronicles, a late composi- 
tion, Satan is said to have prompted David to 
number the people ; whereas in the earlier record, 
it would appear that God inspired the thought. 
Here, then, Satan is an angel like the lying spirit 
sent to deceive the prophets of Ahab ; 3 but not yet 
a devil. So in Genesis, God moves Abraham to 
sacrifice Isaac, but in the book of Jubilees, a 
composition of a date not later than the reign 
of Herod the Great, it is the demon Mastema who 
prompts Abraham. 

1 Ps. xxxviii. 20; lxxi. 13 ; cix. 4, 6, 20, 29. 

2 2 Sam. xxiVa I. 3 I Kings xxii. 22. 



THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. IS I 

But slowly, among the Babylonish and Pales- 
tinian Jews, a system of demonology was being 
elaborated which appears complete in their later 
writings, exhibiting at every point indications of 
Mazdean influence. 

It was otherwise with the Alexandrine Jews. 
The colony had been founded before the demon- 
ology of the returned captives had been formed 
They therefore had no preconceived notions on the 
subject to direct the development of their doctrines 
on the nature and origin of evil 

They had parted from the parent trunk before 
the serpent had begun to be regarded as the devil ; 
and in their philosophy they explained the fall of 
man in an entirely different way from the Pales- 
tinian and Babylonish schools. 

Manichaeism was not yet constituted as a system, 
but all the ideas Manes appropriated were in exis- 
tence before he was born. Alexandria was the 
market-place of the East, where met all the philo- 
sophies and religions of the Orient, modifying and 
colouring one another. From India came the 
notion of the inherent evil in matter. It at once 
arrested the attention of the Alexandrine Jewish 
philosophers, and became an integral part of their 
system. 

According to Philo, who reproduces the ideas 
current long before his time, the soul is Adam, Eve 
is matter. The Fall is the union of soul and body. 



152 THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. 

The ethereal, divine Spirit, the breath of God, felt 
an attraction towards that which was earthly, 
material ; it left its high estate, entered into a 
carnal body, and by so doing, fell. 

Thence flowed a moral system. If the union 
of body with soul constitutes the evil which 
oppresses man, then the whole effort of his life 
must be emancipation from the affections of the 
flesh, the interests which attach him to the world. 
In a word, the only ethics of Philonism is asce- 
ticism. 

Covert Manichseism, which entered the Church 
with the converts of Alexandria, penetrated its 
veins, and filled the deserts of Scete and Nitria 
with hermits, and afterwards the rocks and forests 
of western Europe. 

The two systems mixed but never mingled, and 
manifested throughout the history of the Church a 
tendency to separate into independent philosophies 
of evil. 

We will now leave the historical side of the sub- 
ject, and consider another— the philosophical one. 
Mazdeism and Manichseism, still alive and active in 
the Church, are not systems even tolerable to a 
cultivated reason. We must set them aside to 
consider another. 

i. But, first, let us establish the Fact of the 
existence of evil. 

There lies open before every man an election 



THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. I S3 

between two courses — physical or intellectual de- 
velopment. He may perfect himself as an animal 
or as a man. The Red Indian is as noble a type 
of physical development as it is possible to attain 
to ; but his intellectual position is very low down 
in the scale. 

To be able-bodied, and enjoy rude health, the 
cultivation of the higher nature must, to a certain 
extent, be sacrificed. There is a certain amount 
of vital force in every man ; if it be drawn upon 
for the composition and corrosion of neurine, it 
cannot be used for the construction and resolu- 
tion of muscle. You cannot eat a loaf and have 
it. It is a rare thing to find a student robust and 
ruddy. 

To sacrifice the cultivation of the higher faculties 
in order exclusively to develop the physical condi- 
tion, is an evil ; for it is the abandonment of a 
superior aim for one which is inferior. 

The duplicity of man's composition, therefore, 
makes evil a possibility. 

But the evil thus indicated is only a lower form 
of good. It is good to be sturdy, — k is better to 
be studious. 

Does there exist evidence of evil different from, 
and darker than this, which contains in itself no 
apparent element of good ? I think that it cannot 
be doubted that there does. 

There is an evil which is inexplicable by merely 



154 THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. 

supposing that the animal nature assumes prepon- 
derance over the spiritual nature. For it is an 
observable fact, that man has the faculty, and 
exercises it, of not only suppressing the growth of 
his intellect, but of simultaneously ruining his 
physical powers. If man elected to be an animal 
merely that he might become a more perfect and 
splendid animal, the mystery of evil would be 
simple enough. 

Manichaeism saw that evil in man did arise from 
the sacrifice of the spiritual to the animal nature, 
and on this it built its theory. It made the animal 
nature the source of evil. But this observation was 
only a partial one ; and the theory based on it, 
therefore, does not cover the whole ground. 

It is perfectly certain that man, living as an 
animal, can deliberately go against his animal 
nature, and bring his physical organs into utter 
degradation. He can live neither for his mind nor 
for his body, but for the ruin of both. 

It may be natural for a man to live as a savage, 
but it is not natural for a savage to incapacitate 
himself by debauchery from maintaining his life in 
full vigour. 

That a race of men should invade the land occu- 
pied by another race and conquer it, is natural, but 
not that a nation should exhaust itself by cruelties 
and murder ; for such tend to no advantage physi- 
cal or mental. 



THE MYSTER Y OF E VI L. 1 5 5 

We may, I think, fairly conclude that there does 
exist in the world evil which is unnatural ; that the 
power to choose a course of life which conduces to 
absolute ruin does exist in every man. 

It is the observation of this unnatural evil which 
has led to the formation of the idea that it is super- 
natural ; that the influence which is exerted to draw 
man into the ruin of his body and spirit stands in 
immediate opposition to the influence which draws 
man to the development and perfecting of his 
entire nature. Thus Mazdeism has arisen, which 
ranges the good and the evil principles in opposite 
and nicely-balanced camps, and makes the moral 
law consist in siding with the good principle against 
that which is evil. 

2. We are told again and again that the notion 
of a personal devil, the author of all evil, is unphi- 
losophical. 

It is only unphilosophical if the personal devil be 
exalted into a position such as that assigned him in 
Mazdeism. 

Dionysius laid this down as peremptorily as 
M. Reville. u It is inadmissible/' said that great 
doctor, " that there should exist two principles con- 
trary the one to the other, in contest ; for, if so, 
God himself would not be exempt from trouble and 
contradiction, and all Being would be in incessant 
struggle and confusion.'' 

But, though it be inadmissible to exalt Satan 



156 THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. 

into a principle of evil, it is not unphilosophic, h 
presence of the facts of our experience of man, tc 
suppose that such facts apply also to an angelic 
creation. We know that men can, by an act of 
free-will, refuse to develop their intellectual and 
their physical faculties ; in a word, can oppose the 
ideal of their nature. 

Allowing that God may have created other 
beings, spiritual existences with an ideal object of 
perfection, and free-wills to enable them to advance 
freely to that term, or to oppose it, th£n the exis- 
tence of devils is no more unphilosophic than is the 
existence of any degraded drunkard or prostitute 
picked out of the gutter. 

3. What, then, is evil ? 

It is not a hostile power in conflict with God. 

It is not inherent in matter and opposed to 
spirit. 

It is not a creation of God. 

Dionysius answers, It has no positive existence. 
It is a privation of good. 

~" It has been argued that evil, having no positive 
existence, is the defect of good. But this is not 
true. It is not evil in a beast to be without wings. 
It is not evil in a plant to be without the power of 
locomotion. But it is evil when a bird, designed 
to fly, loses its wings, and when a beast, de- 
signed to run, has its legs broken. 

Evil exists in privation. That is, evil is the in- 



THE MYSTER Y OF E VIE 1 5 7 

terference with the perfecting of the idea in each 
object of creation. 

Free-will makes evil a possibility, and free-will 
makes duty a law. 

If evil were a positive existence, it must spring 
from God. But a good tree cannot bring forth evil 
fruit, neither can a sw T eet spring pour forth bitter 
water. Every other explanation of evil than that 
given by Dionysius is unphilosophical, and leads to 
Mazdeism or Manichseism. 

But to deny the positive nature of evil is not 
enough. It is not, and yet it is. There is no such 
an existence as evil, what existence it has is good, 
for existence is that which is, but nothing is which 
is not of God. Evil is a wilful defect, declension, 
from the ideal. It is only possible because free- 
will exists. That which we call evil is evil because 
it is not what it might be. 

Even the devils, as Dionysius argues, are not 
intrinsically evil, for that which is intrinsically evil 
is not, cannot be. The devils have being, and that 
being is of God. Inasmuch as they exist they 
are good ; inasmuch as they are not w T hat they 
might be, they are evil. 

I cannot do better than quote the words of 
Dionysius : " How can the demons, created by 
God, be evil ? For Good produces and establishes 
only good things. I answer, they are called evil, 
not because they are, for they issue from good, and 



158 THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. 

have obtained as their lot a good nature ; but 
they are evil because of that which they are 
not, having abandoned the conservation of their 
principle. 

" In what are the devils evil but in the fact of 
their squandering, surrendering by habit and opera- 
tion the divine good which was theirs ? " 

4. The Stoic conception of evil as the absence 
of good, as I said at the outset, is eminently 
unsatisfactory. But this cannot be said of the 
definition of evil as the privation of present good, 
the voluntary non-accomplishment of ideal per- 
fection. 

From this definition of evil, what a magnificent 
perspective of moral law opens out ! Good is the 
striving of man to reach his ideal ; in the Apostle's 
words, to reach the measure of the stature of the 
fulness of Christ. 

Some natures are richer in possibilities than 
others ; there are various directions in which they 
may grow and flower ; they can never, in this life, 
amidst the circumstances that hedge them in, reach 
their full glory of perfection ; yet they can always 
strain after it, always aspire. And this aspira- 
tion, this struggle, constitute the law of their life. 
The law of growth, of progress, stamped on the 
material world, is impressed also on that of 
spirits. 

To neglect that law, to have no such aspiration, 



THE MYS TEE Y OF E VIE 1 59 

to abandon this struggle, constitutes eyil in the 
moral realm. 

Evil is wherever there is interference with ad- 
vance to the ideal ; moral evil exists only where 
the free-will intervenes. 

The boy born with faculties which by cultivation 
may make him a poet, a painter, a man of science. 
a philosopher, is so hedged round by adverse circum- 
stances, that these faculties never become effective. 
He spends his life as a farm-labourer. This is evil 
But there is no moral evil in the case. 

But when circumstances do not interfere, and he, 
having opportunities, neglects them, abandons the 
task of accomplishing any of his intellectual ideals, 
that he may live only as an animal, — there moral 
evil exists. 

But if the same youth wastes all his intellectual 
opportunities, branches out in none of the higher 
possibilities open to him, and does not even develop 
his animal nature, but wrecks his constitution by 
loose - living and drunkenness, — here moral evil 
exists in full intensity. He has not aimed at or 
achieved even one ideal, but has rejected every one. 

Where there is no free-will there is no moral 
evil. 

There is another form of moral evil, which we 
are prone to overlook. We are liable to forget 
that from the moment of birth to the last gasp, it 
is the duty of man to be incessantly aspiring, seek- 



1 60 THE MYS TER Y OF E VIL. 

ing to know more, to see farther. He has no right 
to halt at any moment and rest satisfied with what 
he has attained. So to do is to incur moral guilt. 
It is enough to indicate that there are such, too 
many in number, I fear, in whom the zest for the 
acquisition of knowledge is blunted. 

" Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by." 1 



1 Dante, ' Inferno,' Cant. in. 



IX. 

THE INCARNATION, 

In my fourth lecture I showed you that the motive 
of creation was love for man existing potentially 
in the mind of the Creator. 

Man has a double nature : he is part spiritual, 
part material, and therefore in him the possibility 
of a fall from his ideal exists. 

But to lead him to God, he has the world to gaze 
upon, and in it God's 'thoughts are legible. But it is 
quite possible for him to rest in the visible creation 
without looking through it to the ideas of which it is 
the expression, because, as to his body, he is animal ; 
and to the animal the exterior of the world is all. 

Now if God's motive in creation be love, as I 
showed, and there exist in the essence of man's 
nature the possibility of a fall ; then it is probable 
that God would also provide a possibility of re- 
storation. 

But before considering further this point, let me 
say a word or two on the duality in man, and its 
consequences. 

M 



1 62 THE INCARNATION. 

In man there are two principles, or two ideas, 
not necessarily opposed, quite possible of con- 
ciliation ; but the fact of this duality in man's 
nature shows that in him lies the possibility of a 
schism. 

There are two elements in the universe, God and 
phenomena. There are two possibilities open to 
man possessed of a double nature. He may seek 
God through nature, or he may seek nature for and 
in itself. He may rest in the word, or seek the 
reason of the word. 

The possibility of temptation, and therefore ot 
a fall, lies in the fact that there exists a pheno- 
menal world, which may be mistaken by man for 
the object to which his nature tends, to the obscura- 
tion and oblivion of his spiritual ideal and pole. 
By making that which is created, material, pheno- 
menal, his goal, he deifies nature. Nature is a 
god to the beast, because it is the sole object to 
which it gravitates. 

And man, by virtue of the duality of his nature, 
is capable of gravitating like the beast. 

But nature, which is mother to the beast, should 
be only step-mother to man, said the ancients. 1 
In that man is spiritual, he is in the likeness of 
God ; in that he is material, he is in the likeness 
of the world ; and this two-sidedness of his nature 
makes him liable to fall from God. 

1 The saying is in Philo ; whence he quoted it I do not know. 



THE INC A RNA TION. 1 6 3 

But this is just a possibility which should have 
for ever remained a possibility. 

The animal that follows its instinct completes 
the purpose of its life. Man who is governed by 
his passions cannot be said to do so, for he 
has given no room for expansion to his spiritual 
nature. 

The child and the savage are the puppets of 
circumstance. That is to say, they are subject to 
the fatal dominion of exterior forces. We com- 
plain that they are capricious. They do not act 
from rational motives, but from the impulse of the 
moment ; and the impulse of the moment is the 
transformation of a sensation. 

Richardson, speaking of the Dogrib Indians, uses 
words which will describe equally any savages. " We 
found that however high the reward they expected 
to receive on reaching their destination, they could 
not be depended upon to carry letters. A slight 
difficulty, the prospect of a banquet on venison, or 
a sudden impulse to visit some friend, w r ere suffi- 
cient to turn them aside for an indefinite length 
of time." 

Few questions have been more hotly debated 
than that of free-will ; but, it seems to me, that 
question is comparatively simple. It resolves itself 
into this — Has man got a mind open to ideas not 
necessarily concerning his animal development ? 
If he have, is that mind subject to the law of 

M 2 



1 64 THE INC ARM A TION. 

growth ? If it be, can he advance or retard that 
growth ? 

Or, more simply — Is man capable of resisting 
the instantaneous impulse ? If he be, he has a 
free-will. 

The will is, indeed, the watershed of man's life, 
sending its streams towards God or towards nature. 
Free-will is the faculty of determining the develop- 
ment of one factor of man's being at the expense 
of the other, or of resisting the impulses of either. 
If I can make a choice between study and idleness, 
I have a free-wilL If when struck on one cheek I 
can turn the other without retaliating by a blow, 
I have mastered my natural impulse, I have esta- 
blished the freedom of my will. 

An accomplished lady, married to an eminent 
man of science, has related to me how when she 
—a young girl from school— first married, her hus- 
band required her assistance in some of his work, 
the registration of observations — work which inter- 
fered with his deeper studies. At first she had her 
novel under the table every day, and when her 
attention was not in immediate request, she re- 
verted from the dry meteorological records to the 
harrowing romance. But by degrees she threw her- 
self more and more into her husband's pursuits, 
and is now happy in her home, a companion to her 
husband, and in general honour. But for the exer- 
cise of her free-will she would have been now a 



THE INCARNATION. 1 65 

poor, frivolous, foolish woman, repining over her 
lot, resenting her uncongenial surroundings, by 
many pitied, by none respected. 

Like the natural body, the spirit has before it 
a life of growth and development. The metamor- 
phosis of sensations into ideas does not take place 
like those crystallizations which occur in a liquid, 
slowly building up the branches of a metallic tree. 
The soul has the faculty of catching each sensation, 
of retaining, analysing it, and extracting from it 
a sense, a lesson. The association of ideas has its 
laws, no doubt ; the cerebral world has its echoes 
which do not sound at random ; but there can be 
no question that we have the faculty of elaborating 
our sensations ; and, if so, we have the pow T er in 
our hands of giving scope to the growth of our 
spirit, or of cramping, starving, and killing it. 

A spirit originally perfect is a contradiction in 
the world of nature, for the law of nature is evolu- 
tion ; and a spirit entering into union with matter 
becomes subject to the law of growth. The nutri- 
ment of the spirit is ideas; and these ideas are 
extracted from phenomena. But the fact of the 
spirit being compelled thus laboriously to draw its 
nourishment subjects it to conditions of time. It 
slowly accumulates ideas, and the accumulation of 
ideas is the acquirement of knowledge ; and each 
step in knowledge is a stage of mental growth. 

Perfection is the goal of the spirit, attained by a 



1 66 THE INCARNA TION. 

continuous action of the will struggling against the 
fatal laws of nature. But by this, the spirit mani- 
fests its liberty. 

In the child, the empire of liberty is scarcely 
founded ; the domination of fatality is supreme ; it 
is subject to the play of circumstances, and re- 
sponds to them without independence. In the 
man who, by the sweat of his brow has formed 
his character, has established his individuality, the 
control of circumstances, the tyranny of fatality is 
reduced to extreme feebleness, whilst the empire of 
liberty is sovereign. 

Now the spiritual nature of man is complex. 
As it looks towards nature, its tendency is towards 
science ; as it looks towards men, its tendency is 
towards morality. 

That is to say, the mind in contemplating the 
works of creation, perceives in them order and 
unity, forms of the Divine idea, and seeks there- 
for to arrange the objects of nature in their order, 
and exhibit their unity. The mind applies abstract 
ideas to things that are concrete, and is able 
thereby to understand them. 

But the mind in considering the relations of man 
with man is filled with these same ideas of order 
and unity, and thereby learns that man has duties^ 
which he owes to his fellow-men, the correlatives of 
their rights. 

Without a knowledge of the broad principles of 



THE INCARNATION. l§7 

moral law, society would be an impossibility ; with- 
out society, civilization would be impracticable. 

But these ideas which thus lie at the root of 
science and morals are the forms of the Divine 
idea in creation. Without God, they are rays with- 
out a sun, streams without a source. It is from 
God that all abstract ideas flow in which existences 
take shape and significance. Order and unity 
without God as their cause are inexplicable ; 
morality without God to impose it, is without 
obligation. 

Yet it is possible to consider nature and society 
as ends in themselves, and thus to cast them adrift 
from God, In that possibility consists another 
departure from God. 

The animal, the plant, cannot fall. Their destiny 
is to live for themselves ; to evolve their nature to 
its extreme limits, and then to hand on their life to 
fresh generations. When the tame pigeon escapes 
from its dovecot and takes to the woods, its pro- 
geny lose the characteristics of the domesticated 
pigeon, and become ordinary wild wood-pigeons. 

I have in my garden a row of hollyhocks. They 
were planted double. They have in two years 
become single ; they have deteriorated. But in the 
pigeon and the hollyhock there is no fall ; for the 
bird and the plant are governed in their growth by 
external circumstances only ; and they assume that 
form best adapted to the circumstances in which 



1 68 THE INCARNA TION. 

they find themselves. The forest life is unsuitable 
to the fancy pigeon ; the stiff loam to the double 
hollyhock. 

Man is, indeed, subject in a measure to circum- 
stances, but is not, as I have already shown you, 
fatally governed by them ; he has in him 'an ele- 
ment—his spiritual nature — which enables him to 
rise superior to adversities and difficulties. If he 
succumb, his is a true fall, for there existed in him 
the faculty of overriding the forces of nature, and 
maintaining his supremacy. 

According to Christian doctrine, Adam, the first 
man, fell. That is, Adam, the first man possessing 
a spiritual nature, the Divine spark of soul, the 
faculty of seeing God, and reading creation, had 
before him God and the world, the spiritual and 
the cosmical poles of his being. He had before 
him the problem of attaining physical and. spiritual 
perfection. By an act of free choice he inclined 
the scale of his nature towards the lower, animal 
pole ; he gave the material, physical, fatal element 
preponderance over the immaterial, spiritual, free 
element. And the beam he kicked has remained 
overbalanced ever since. 

There are three possibilities open to man : the 
recognition of God, the deification of the ideas of 
God, and the deification of the phenomena which 
are the manifestations of these ideas. There are 
open to him, therefore, two sorts of apostasy : the 



THE INCARNA TION. 2 69 

idolatry of ideas, and the idolatry of phenomena* 
The idolatry of ideas consists in accepting the 
abstract ideas of God without acknowledging them 
as belonging to God. The idolatry of phenomena 
consists in the deification of the objects of sensual 
life. The former is an arrested gravitation of the 
spirit towards God, the latter is a rupture of the 
spiritual attractive forces, and a rush of his energies 
towards the pole of animal life. 

Before proceeding, let me briefly sum up what I 
have been saying in a series of propositions. 

1. There are two elements in the universe — God 
and nature. 

2. God has clothed his ideas in form. All the 
objects of creation are the manifestation of His 
thoughts ; and man was made in order that he 
might, through these external signs, read the inner 
thoughts, and see these thoughts as proceeding 
from the mind of God. 

3. And in thus reading the thoughts of God does 
man's spiritual nature grow to its ideal, which is 
perfection of knowledge. 

4. But it follows as a possibility that man may 
not only be arrested by the outward husk, but may 
also halt at the ideas. By so doing he falls short 
of seeing God, and therefore of attaining his ideal. 

5. And, alas ! we know by experience that this 
possibility has become a fact. 

If, then, the possibility of a Fall lies before man, 



1 70 THE INCARNA TION. 

and the motive of creation was love for man, it is 
reasonable to conclude that God would provide 
some additional check upon man, make some 
other appeal to man, for his preservation or resto- 
ration. 

One thing God could not do ; He could not 
perfect man without man's consent and co-opera- 
tion. He could not do so for this reason, — that 
man is spirit as well as body ; and the essence of 
spirit consists in its freedom. 

If God were to will man's perfection without 
man's free consent, it would necessitate the destruc- 
tion of his freedom. But the destruction of his 
freedom would be the destruction of his spirit, and 
the destruction of his spirit would be the reduction 
of man to the condition of a mere animal. His 
perfection would then be his degradation. 

Calvinistic predestinarianism therefore strikes at 
the root of Christian theology. By making man's 
fate depend solely on the determination of the 
Creator, it reduces his spirit to a condition analo- 
gous to that of the beast, higher it may be, but not 
more free, and therefore not really spirit. 

If, then, God designs man's restoration, He must 
seek that restoration of man, not by suppression of 
man's freedom, but by supplying additional mo- 
tives and inducements for the exercise of his will 
in electing agreement with God's design. 

God can make another appeal to man, and must 



THE IXC A RNA TIOX. 1 7 1 

then leave it entirely to man to give his ear to it or 
reject it. 

The whole of creation is an appeal to man,— it 
was designed as an appeal to him, to his under- 
standing. It is calculated to lift him above his 
animal associates, and enthrone him as the king of 
creation. He was sent into the world without hairy 
clothing like the bull, without the claws and teeth 
of the lion, the agility of the panther, with a naked 
and unprotected body ; and this destitution of 
natural protection and means of offence and defence 
served to develop the faculties of his mind, His 
needs were goads to the exercise of his mental 
powers. " Though less capable than most other 
animals of living on the herbs and fruits that un- 
aided nature supplies, this wonderful faculty (of 
reason) taught him to govern and chisel nature to 
his own benefit, and make her produce food for 
him when and where he pleased. From the moment 
when the first skin was used as a covering, when 
the first rude spear was formed to assist in the 
chase, the first seed sown or shoot planted, a grand 
revolution was effected in nature — a revolution 
which in all the previous ages of the world's history 
had had no parallel ; for a being had arisen who 
was no longer necessarily subject to change with 
the changing universe — a being who was in some 
degree superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew 
how to control and regulate her action, and could 



1 72 THE INC A RNA TION. 

keep himself in harmony with her, not by a change 
of body, but by an advance in mind." l 

So, throughout, has civilization been produced 
by the advance and growth of the mind through 
observation and conquest of nature. 

Creation has been the appeal of God to man's 
reason, He appeals through it still; and as science 
grows, men are penetrating farther and farther into 
the mind of God. 

But the appeal through creation has not sufficed 
man ; at all events, not all men. There are many, 
no doubt, who, seeking the laws of nature, do rever- 
ence to God whose thoughts they are, but there are 
others inaccessible to such appeals. 

Moreover, the study of nature, though it may 
advance civilization, does not provide man with 
what is of greatest importance to him — the law of 
his conduct. History is the Book of Revelation of 
God's moral law, in which the philosopher may 
trace the tendencies of certain principles to the 
welfare or fall of nations ; but, after all, it is an 
uncertain study, for so many causes are at work 
towards the development or destruction of a great 
state that it is impossible to reduce its welfare to 
dependence on a moral code, or rather to elaborate 
a moral code from the fluctuations in the prosperity 
of a nation. 

1 'Anthrop. Rev./ May, 1864: Mr. Wallace, "The Origin of 
the Human Race." 



THE 1NCARNA TION. 1 7 3 

Nor, indeed, in ordinary life, do we find that 
observation will give us a correct moral standard 
on which to frame our conduct. 

The current theory that virtue is always recom- 
pensed with happiness is broken through by great 
and many exceptions. The cross and crown of 
thorns are often its only reward. 

Nobleness, godliness, heroism of character in any 
form whatsoever, have nothing to do with man's 
prosperity, or even happiness, The utterly vicious 
man who violates soul and bodily ideals is no doubt 
wretched enough ; but not so the worldly, prudent, 
selfish man, who understands perfectly how to 
gratify his senses with tempered indulgence, follow- 
ing the hack routine of respectability. Though he 
may be the basest and most contemptible slave of 
his selfishness, he is happy and prosperous. He is 
following out an ideal — a low and ignoble one ; but 
inasmuch as it is an ideal, he therein finds content- 
ment. 

It cannot be said that social life encourages a 
high ideal. On the contrary, with a thousand hands 
it drags daring originality down to the common 
vulgar level. 

Moreover, society takes cognizance of crimes, 
but not of sins ; of crimes, that is, wrongs which 
affect others ; but is supremely indifferent to sins, 
wrongs done by us to ourselves. 

Consequently the philosophy of history and 



1 74 THE INCARNA TION. 

social science will never supply men with a code of 
moral law for the guidance of their conduct with 
regard to themselves. 

Natural science is the revelation of the thoughts 
of God in one order — declares one class of laws. 

History and social science manifest to us the 
thoughts of God in another order — declare another 
class of laws. 

But still there is a third order, very essential to 
man to know, which none of these reveal, the class 
of laws which relate to himself individually ; laws 
which make heroism a duty, which transfer the 
principle of progress within, and constitute it the 
governing principle of man's conscience. 

Now is it not probable that a God creating 
out of love would also in His love reveal those 
moral laws which affect man's personal well-being ? 
Such a revelation Christianity declares was made 
in Christ Jesus. 

As creation is the manifestation of God, so is 
social life, political organization, a manifestation of 
God ; so also is the Incarnation a manifestation 
of God. 

Creation is the revelation of the laws that govern 
matter. History, social science, reveal the laws 
that govern communities. The Incarnation unfolds 
the laws that govern individuality. 

Law is evoked by the struggle of beings for 
existence. Law is really a fact ; the fact of the 



THE INCARNA TION. 1 7 5 

unity of the ideal which contains other ideas. We 
may call it a law which makes 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, or 
3 + 3 = 6, and will not suffer any one integer to 
swell without a corresponding diminution in the 
others ; but it is really a fact. 

As in the universe there are myriads of exist- 
ences — i. e. ideas working to the surface — law r is 
called into being to harmonize them. But this law 
is simply the fact of the unity of the idea of creation 
in the mind of God. 

As in mankind there are multitudes of men, and 
their civilization depends on the control of the 
separate individualities, their subordination to the 
welfare of the whole, on the maintenance of just 
balance between authority and liberty, between, 
that is, the will of the whole and the spontaneity 
of the individual, law is called into existence ; and, 
so far as it is true, founded on true observation, it 
is a revelation of God's will with regard to man as 
a social being. 

But as the individual man has a double nature, 
the friction in this case also necessitates the 
production of a law, that is, the revelation of the 
ideal of God in respect to man's perfection as an 
individual. 

For the welfare of mankind, therefore, two 
revelations are necessary : the revelation of the 
laws which govern society, and a revelation of the 
law r s which govern the springs of man's inner being. 



1 76 THE INCARNA TION. 

The laws which govern society may be learned 
by experiment Every form of government the 
world has seen has been an experiment to discover 
these laws. Parliament is a laboratory in which 
these laws are being investigated annually. These 
laws are to be discovered experimentally, as sani- 
tary laws may be ; and the political fortunes of 
nations are the data from which they may be de- 
duced. We learn from the mistakes of a previous 
age, and may fairly hope in time to determine 
governmental laws as satisfactorily as we have 
determined certain laws of physics. When this 
goal has been arrived at, the political situation will 
be one of ideal perfection. 

Now the Incarnation is the revelation of ideal 
perfection in man as an individual ; and therefore 
the establishment of the law which is to govern 
his conscience. 

If the world has been created in love, then a 
moral revelation is demanded. To create man, 
and not tell him his destiny, how he is to attain 
to the highest and noblest climax of his being, is 
to create him without love. 

Yet love is the key to creation. It alone ex- 
plains it. 

Allow that the world is a revelation of the ideas 
of God, then a further revelation is postulated by 
it — a revelation of the ideal of human individual 
perfection. 



THE INCARNA TION. 1 77 

That revelation is in Jesus Christ, the Man, the 
perfect exhibition before the world of the arche- 
typal man, as he existed in the mind of God before 
the creation of the world. 

Now let us turn to another order of thoughts. 

Such a revelation has for its object the influ- 
encing of the human will. 

Through creation God reveals Himself to the 
reason, and influences the will by instructing the 
judgment. But as there are men who are not 
governed by reason, whose will acts against their 
judgment, men who will not cultivate their judg- 
ment, God — according to Christian doctrine — has 
made a further revelation of Himself, not now to 
the reason, but to the heart, to influence the heart, 
to stir up the heart to quicken the judgment, and 
so stimulate the will to choose that which has been 
simultaneously revealed — the moral law. 

It would be impossible to conceive a more beau- 
tiful and touching life than that of Our Lord — one 
more eminently calculated to move the heart. And 
the emotion thus aroused is not a vain stirring of 
sympathy ; it is designed to lead on to something 
— to acceptance of His teaching, the declaration 
to man of the moral law. 

Man's perfection consists in the development of 
his whole being, and this is possible within certain 
boundaries only ; he must know these limitations 
to his energy, and freely accept them. To compass 

N 



i 



178 THE INCARNA TION. 

this, God manifests His love to man through Jesus 
Christ, by whom also He declares to man what the 
law of his nature is. Man, attracted by this exhibi- 
tion of love, voluntarily bows to the law, and in 
Christianity reaches the apogee of perfection social 
and individual. 

The design of creation was to reveal to man 
ideas of a certain class only ; ideas of another class 
are revealed to man through Christ. 

Creation is the prologue to the Incarnation ; it 
prepares for and leads up to that which is its 
completion. 

Man is the explanation and climax of creation ; 
and Christ is the explanation and climax of man. 

If man sum in himself all animate and inani- 
mate nature, Christ sums in Himself all humanity. 
That revelation which was partial in creation is 
completed in Christ. In Him God reveals His 
fulness, and creation was a prophecy of Christ. 

It is not possible to demonstrate the fact of the 
Incarnation. All that I can do is to show you 
that this Christian doctrine is not impossible, nay, 
further, is probable. 

Now I must answer, very briefly and imperfectly, 
one of the most prominent objections made to the 
doctrine of the Incarnation. 

It is said, How could God the Creator become 
His own creature? This is thought to contain an 
irreconcilable contradiction. 



THE INC A RNA TION. 1 79 

But it does not do so. 

If creation be possible, the Incarnation is pos- 
sible ; for if the ideas of God can be clothed in form 
and substance in creation, so can also the idea of 
God in Himself be invested in flesh. 

The Second Person of the Trinity, the Logos, is 
the living Divine idea of the Godhead begotten of 
the Father, existing from all eternity. 

For God could not exist without having the idea 
of Himself, in the plenitude of His perfection, and 
that idea is begotten of God ; yet the time never 
was when He had not this idea of the plenitude of 
His nature. 

The idea of God, issuing from the mind of God, 
is the idea of God with all His attributes, and is 
therefore equal to God. This eternally begotten 
Divine idea, one with God, is the Logos. 

God, as the I-myself, revealing itself to itself, 
and unfolding its fulness in the form of distinct 
thought, is the Eternal Father. Looking on the 
heavenly image of the world as it arises out of His 
own essence, God sees the express image of His 
person, the vision of His own perfect essence as its 
cause and its end. 

The heavenly ideal world would not be a system, 
but a chaos split into variety, without order, but for 
the idea of God rising as the principle of thought 
before His mind as the unifier, the co-ordinator, 
the all - sustaining principle of that objective 

N 2 



1 80 THE INCARNA TION. 

manifoldness which presents itself to the Father's 
gaze. 

Thus the Son is the alpha and omega of 
creation, its harmonizer, its sovereign ; li without 
Him was not anything made that was made." 
"By Him are all things, and in Him all things 
consist/' 

Indeed, it is inconceivable that the Father could 
have called the world into being without the Son ; 
for He could not have seen the ideal world rise 
up in imagery before His mind, without the idea of 
Himself as its source, its law, its end. 

Now apply the same thought to mankind. 

God sees the human creation, and the idea of 
Himself as that from which it sprung, and to which 
it tends as its perfection. Without the Son, man 
could not exist ideally ; and man needs the Son 
present to lead him back to God. 

If the Son be the centre of creation, He is the 
centre likewise of the innermost ring of that great 
circle of being. 

All men are indeed manifestations of a Divine 
idea, and that idea constitutes their individuality. 
But no one of the individuals, who constitute the 
human family, expresses more than a partial and 
imperfect union of the Divine and human natures. 

All, therefore, point beyond themselves, to an 
union of God and man, which shall be perfect and 
complete. 



THE INC A RNA TION. 1 8 1 

As the fulness of all creative ideas is in the 
Father, so the fulness of all humanity is in the Son. 
He entered into immediate relation with humanity, 
not merely as the idea of humanity in the abstract, 
but as the idea of perfect human individuality, to 
be the exemplar of all mankind, and to be the 
point of union through which they may return to 
their source. 



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